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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead: Premiere to Eternity?: Difference between revisions

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Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms.
Below him, under the blows of the February Hawaiian sun, the quadrangle gasped defenselessly like an exhausted fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the parched red dust, a muted orchestra of sounds emerged: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bouncing over brick, the slappings of oiled leather sling straps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoe soles, and the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms.
He thought these things had become your heritage somewhere along the line. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by renouncing the place they given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>
He thought these things had become your heritage somewhere along the line. You are multiplied by each sound that you hear. And you cannot deny them without denying with them the purpose of your own existence. Yet now, he told himself, you are denying them by renouncing the place they given you.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=3}}</blockquote>
 
{{pg|319|320}}
By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester's friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will "soljer" and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark.  
By the end of Chapter Two, we know of the principal protagonist, Prewitt, whose place in the Company he is leaving, and we know something about the Kentucky mountains from which he hails. Within a few more chapters, Prewitt is deeply engaged in his new world of Company G: the stern but fatherly Warden, the jokester's friend Pfc. Maggio, company commander Holmes, and the numerous sharply drawn men who will "soljer" and chat and play cards with Prewitt and try to force him to box for the Company or almost make him wish he had, including Anderson, Bloom, Chaote, Kowalski, Leva, Mazzioli, Preem, and Stark.  


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“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>
“I call,” Maggio said without looking around. “Take off, you bum,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. Bloom laughed after him self-confidently and nastily.{{sfn|Jones|1951|p=137}}</blockquote>
 
{{pg|321|322}}
Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical “dramatic-novelistic” mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the sta- tus distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor:
Though the book does not appear to aspire to any allegorical significance beyond easily generalizable but hardly unusual outsider-insider, self-society, subordinate-superordinate tensions central to its dramatic construction, its typical “dramatic-novelistic” mode of expression incisively and elaborately illustrates insights into the relation of the individual to society within the specifically military hierarchal orders. ''Eternity'' rises eloquently to nice ironies of social aspiration and class, war, and peace, as in the book’s final pages on the sta- tus distortions of Lerene’s recollections of Prewitt’s patriotism and war. Take Karen Holmes and her son on the latter as they leave Honolulu Harbor:


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