The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Wise Blood of Norman Mailer: An Interpretation and Defense of Why Are We in Vietnam?: Difference between revisions

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 But there is no such realization seen in Mailer’s 1968 novel ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' In it, protagonist D.J. gives up his freedom of choice by acquiescing to the “wisdom of the blood.” By submitting to the dictates of Nature (that is,“instinct”), D.J. loses all control of the hunt, to say nothing of his life. He learns nothing from his encounter with “that Cannibal Emperor of Nature’s Psyche” {{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=200}}. And having learned nothing, he is subsequently doomed perforce to confronting life with the animalistic shallowness of his father. In the end, he lacks the courage to be free and voluntarily gives his will over to instinct.
+Returning to the basic story, Rusty and D.J. arrive at the Brooks Range with the two “medium asses” and Tex Hyde, D.J.’s best friend. They are met by a half-breed Indian guide named Big Luke and his assistant Ollie. Big Luke warns them that the exposure to modem technology has driven the big grizzlies mad; now they are doubly wily and dangerous.
+None of the American group is particularly impressed by this. They are equipped with rifles powerful enough to down rhinoceros. (This of course
+refers to the overmatching of American weapons against those of the North Vietnamese.) And predictably, the large animals encountered are mown
+down without the slightest chance given to the animal. A helicopter is used to frighten them to a spot where hunters lay in wait. The slaughter is described without sentiment from Mailer; but it is obvious enough that the Americans brought with them some virulent, malignant evil. The savagery of Nature seems real only as it festers within the armored hearts of men.
+This intentional parody of Hemingway’s claim that killing a big animal was somehow noble is one of the most vital messages Mailer gives us. As we experience the mindless slaughter, we are aware only of the cold insensibility of the killers. The animals—wolves, caribou, bear—show agonizing emotion as they die, peering at their executors through fading yellow eyes. But the emotion we are told wells up in the hunters is just the smug satisfaction of proving one’s sexual supremacy in the presence of one’s friends.
+A wolf is killed and its blood becomes the beverage of ritual as the two boys and guide drink it from a cup. Oh well, they tried. The magic does not work and they remain alienated by both Nature and humanity. Thus another wolf killed with neither ceremony nor feeling, not even a pretense. A majestic caribou is shot off of a ridge and the hunters are angry because the necessity of gutting it spoils their killing spree for the rest of the day.
+The next day, with the use of the helicopter (a “Cop Turd” in D.J.’s lingo), a bear couple is spotted, male and female. Both are riddled with massive bullets from every rifle. Big Luke grants the credit of the kill to Tex and “one of the medium asses.” The female has twelve slugs in her. D.J. is pleased to see her covered with “her last shit.” But Rusty is hardly pleased. He is furious and panicky. He will look and feel ridiculous if a “medium ass” brings home a kill and he does not.
+The next day Rusty and D.J. go hunting without the others. They track down a huge grizzly and D.J. shoots it twice. The bear has enough anger and energy left to charge the terrified D.J., stopping only ten yards away. The teenager has “faced death and acted with great courage, again parodying Hemingway. But he does not experience a “cold moment in time.” For him the moment is all too hot. He trembles and sweats, having stepped “into dark and smelling pig shit ....” We realize that D.J. has defecated in his pants. It was not nobility that enabled him to face the charging bear. It was sheer panic. D.J. had frozen.
+But this is a small revelation compared to the next. When the grizzly proves to be alive and escapes into the forest, the father and son have to follow it. Neither would go if they had been alone; together they are shamed into pursuing the wounded bear. They find it where it lies dying and helpless. As D.J. approaches, Rusty nervously and cowardly lags behind. He is all too willing to allow his son the dubious pleasure of confronting the unknown.
+But if Rusty is ultimately a coward he is nevertheless a determined one. Rusty not only has his honor at stake; he has invested over six thousand dollars! When D.J. is only a few yards away, Rusty lifts his rifle and places a sad and pointless round between the dead bear’s eyes. There is one last spasmodic paroxysm, “legs thrashing, brain exploding from new galvanizing and
+overloadings of massive damage report, and one last heuuuuuuuuu, all forgiveness gone.”  {{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=156}}. Back at the camp of Big Luke, D.J. has to admit that Rusty indeed placed the last shot. Rusty is silent for a few moments, perhaps embarrassed, but then says, “Yeah, I guess it’s mine, but one of its sweet legs belongs to D.J.” {{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=157}}.
+In the early 1960s, Vietnam was still seen as a technologically primitive country that would fall like a wild animal under the vastly superior weapons of the United States. The corporate mind of America presumed itself intellectually and morally so far above the Vietnamese that the war was not even considered a real war, but only a minor “police action,” which was undertaken ostentatiously for the good of civilized mankind. Mailer’s bizarre bear hunt took this red-herring justification of the fathers, turned it inside out, and revealed that it was red from the bloodiest kind of deceptions.
+The result of such probing insight is the realization of an exquisite irony. While the corporate minded fathers spoke of civilization and technology, their true motives lay in the coarsest kind of savagery: animal instinct. Just as Rusty must slaughter a grizzly to reaffirm his dominancy among his “tribal” peers, so must corporate America reaffirm its dominancy among its global peers. And just as Rusty intentionally sacrifices the honor of his son to maintain his dominancy, so the corporate state willingly sacrifices its young citizens for the same bestial purpose.
+In the end, Mailer implies and perhaps confesses that there is nothing civilized about violence. The roots of murder and warfare are imbedded in the soil of our animal ancestry. As long as we justify our blood lust and hunger for sexual dominancy, we are not civilized men, but baboons and hyenas and wolves—at the best, monkeys.
+Rusty and his group do not find savagery and slaughter in the “wilds” of Alaska. Rather, they bring savagery and slaughter with them. They do not absorb some natural energy that forces them to live on “bestial” terms with a cruel Nature. Rather, they bring with them a distinctly human violence, a cultivated horror of human hubris and an inability to empathize with living creatures.
+If ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' ended at this point, the allegory would stand as beautifully elegant and simple. But Mailer, unlike his predecessor Ernest Hemingway, has always preferred to elaborate upon his elaborations. Having made his two fundamental points, he continues to extend his allegorical bear hunt into more mysterious, even occult, areas.
+Feeling poisoned and contaminated by his father’s betrayal, D.J. sets out with Tex to confront Nature without weapons. They leave early in the morning without telling the others of their intentions. Alone and unarmed they experience a humbling fear, a shocking revelation of their own nakedness. When the earlier hunting party had spotted a wolf, the animal had been quickly shot and its blood drunk. When the unarmed boys spot a wolf, they are paralyzed with fright.
+In the Freudian sense, they have been emasculated and incapable of violence without their huge guns. They’ve lost their erection for life. But
+in a more mundane sense, without their technological superiority, they sink even lower than the animals they disdain. A bear is heard in the
+brush and the boys climb a tree. They sense their loss of power over Nature without their big guns because “this mother nature is as big and dangerous and mysterious as a beautiful castrating cunt when she’s on the edge between murder and love” {{sfn|Mailer|1967|p=197}} (Mailer’s distrust and downright hatred of technology comes through—his point is clarified perhaps more than is necessary.)
+Here we have a clue into the disturbing and unhealthy attitude toward animals (that is, “Nature”), shown by not only the boys but Rusty and his
+group as they personify the attitude of their country. Though the boys, when alone in the forest, experience a fear of a “red in tooth and claw” Nature, they experience neither understanding nor compassion for its purity and beauty. As from the beginning, the animals are only a means to easing inner tensions through violence. In fact, both boys regret not being armed in order to kill while they are “loving” Nature. Mailer seems to suggest that what hunters experience through Nature is not love at all, but rather a tremendously satisfying justification of one’s instinctive and overwhelming need for violence.
 ===Notes===