The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead: Difference between revisions
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==HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: TRAUMA’S TREATMENT IN PRESENTING WWII== | ==HEMINGWAY AND MAILER: TRAUMA’S TREATMENT IN PRESENTING WWII== | ||
Ernest Hemingway’s ''''Across the River and into the Trees'' (1957) and Norman Mailer’s ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948) illustrate necessary components and adaptations of the exploration of the narrative engagement of the traumas of war into and onto the structures of fiction. Carlos Baker observes that Hemingway’s ARIT projects an “atmosphere” that “was darkened by a strange psychological malaise, as if Ernest were using the pages of his novel as the equivalent of a psychiatrist’s couch” (477). While Baker—like many Hemingway scholars— is keen to link Hemingway’s second-to-last novel to the author’s personal experiences, Hemingway’s novel does not exist merely as an autobiographical account of trauma. Instead, Hemingway’s | Ernest Hemingway’s ''''Across the River and into the Trees'' (1957) and Norman Mailer’s ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948) illustrate necessary components and adaptations of the exploration of the narrative engagement of the traumas of war into and onto the structures of fiction. Carlos Baker observes that Hemingway’s ARIT projects an “atmosphere” that “was darkened by a strange psychological malaise, as if Ernest were using the pages of his novel as the equivalent of a psychiatrist’s couch” (477). While Baker—like many Hemingway scholars— is keen to link Hemingway’s second-to-last novel to the author’s personal experiences, Hemingway’s novel does not exist merely as an autobiographical account of trauma. Instead, Hemingway’s oft-dismissed novel captures the sentiment of a culture affected by the trauma of war in the work’s evolved narrative structure. Baker is partially correct in his observations; however, the atmosphere of the novel is not merely darkened by Hemingway’s personal malaise, so much as the novel presents the dark malaise of a culture attempting to reconcile narratives that speak from the abject position of trauma. | ||
Mailer’s NAD is the author’s first novel, and the reviews—unlike the reviews for Hemingway’s second-to-last-novel ARIT—refer to Mailer’s novel as successful at its attempt of providing commentary on the war; in fact, reviewers deemed it “the best novel yet about World War II.” Mailer’s work captures the experiences of war in a non-romantic fashion with its focus on the disunity surrounding the trauma of war in the structure of the narrative. The narrative disunity captured and implemented in the structure of both Mailer’s and Hemingway’s WW II novels involve a point of view that differs from the prior structures of war fiction. In the aftermath of the Second World War, American fiction—illustrated in ARIT and NAD—engages a different narrative point of view involving abjection and drawing on the trauma of war to generate a different structure of narrative. | Mailer’s NAD is the author’s first novel, and the reviews—unlike the reviews for Hemingway’s second-to-last-novel ARIT—refer to Mailer’s novel as successful at its attempt of providing commentary on the war; in fact, reviewers deemed it “the best novel yet about World War II.” Mailer’s work captures the experiences of war in a non-romantic fashion with its focus on the disunity surrounding the trauma of war in the structure of the narrative. The narrative disunity captured and implemented in the structure of both Mailer’s and Hemingway’s WW II novels involve a point of view that differs from the prior structures of war fiction. In the aftermath of the Second World War, American fiction—illustrated in ARIT and NAD—engages a different narrative point of view involving abjection and drawing on the trauma of war to generate a different structure of narrative. | ||