Term Paper on "War World War II This Report Focuses"

Term Paper 4 pages (1525 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

War

World War II

This report focuses on the frontline battlefield experiences of both American and Japanese soldiers as depicted in the semibiographical but fictional work "The Naked and the Dead" by Norman Mailer and the autobiographical account of World War II experiences by Ooka Shohei in the "Fires on the Plain." Both of these great books are war account classics that have been highly touted in each of their respective countries and both provide insights from a unique perspective that actually delivers the reader onto the front lines and into the hells of war on hot Pacific islands. Thus, having read both books has provided me with a new understanding and perspective of both sides of war. My take is that there are no winners.

Basically, the United States' troops came out the victors in World War II and the Japanese were obviously the eventual losers. Yet, as demonstrated by both of these authors, each side has to deal with the monotony, pressures and horrors associated to war. Each of these novels, therefore, provides detailed insights into the past but also does some foreshadowing into the future. As the characters in each of these works struggles to contend with a situation that is far out of their own control and not of their own doing, life on the frontlines continues to move ahead all around them. Stay out of war at all costs.

Story Lines

The Naked and the Dead" by Norman Mailer is a novel about human tragedy. The book was set during World War II on one of the many islands American armed forces had to battle for against the Royal Japanese soldiers. The story depicts the island as an insignificant one in the scope of the pacific theatre but that does not cut down on the book's characters having to deal with isolation, death, loss and the loneliness of being away from ones family and society. All of the characters in this work do their fair share of suffering as the war goes on all around them. Victory only shows that many of their comrades in arms are never going home and those who are lucky to go home have been scarred either mentally or physically and will never be the same.

Fires on the Plain" by Ooka Shohei was also set on one of those insignificant little islands somewhere in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The story line is a retelling of the author's personal experiences while he was a prisoner of war to the American forces.

Although the author throughout the book is looking inside to see how he has changed, his perspective gives the perception that ultimately the war has led to his fellow man's degradation. The pressures applied by the eventual victorious allied forces begin to break down the Japanese soldier's social order and this eventually pushes the star of Shohei's book to become an isolated outcast.

Shohei

War either pushes men together or it pushes them apart. In the "Fires on the Plain" by Ooka Shohei, war isolated him, Private Tamura, to a point that he was literally ostracized as an outcast of the blatantly structured Japanese social order. The war therefore forced Private Tamura to suffer the effects of the conflict by his being driven to solitude while in the throngs of utter chaos. On the island of Leyte, Private Tamura was witness to his army's disintegrating right before his eyes as the American forces continued to bombard the island and then storm over the axis troops in waves. As the army crumbled, Private Tamura also went through an individual breakdown that signified his own disintegration. Although he is both sensitive and intelligent, he can no longer hold the ties of a structure society.

When his society then rebels against him in the fact that he is abandoned by his company, Private Tamura has no alternative than to wander around the island. The frustration of war has him torn between the option of life and death. The Code of Bushido would dictate that he take his own life if society were as it should be. but, in his isolation he is no longer able justify a reason to neither live nor die. He basically has no food or water and his will and spirit are broken. Yet, somehow he continues to struggle for life.

Faced with this life or death dilemma, Private Tamura begins to analyze the horrors he has witnessed and what he feels are the wrongs of war. Today we would probably consider Tamura as being in a state of shell shock because as he wanders throughout the island through thick forests and rugged mountains, he is completely numb to life and existence. Like the Yin and Yang, life for Tamura is a series of beauty and the beast scenarios. The beauty of the island contrasts the horrors of death and destruction caused by war.

Eventually this inner and outer hell through starvation and isolation pushes the soldier to a point just before he accepts cannibalism as a viable solution to his immediate problems. There is no doubt that war has broken this once proud man into something that he will never understand.

Mailer

Today, Norman Mailer can be considered one of the literary greats. He is a word smith and a genius by all accounts through his novels, journalistic exploits and even his opinions regarding world economics. but, in the more innocent times of the post World War II 1940's and 50's, Norman Mailer shocked the world with his first book. The semibiographical account in the fictional work "The Naked and the Dead," was too risque for the times as the World War II novel was at one time even banned in several states because of the explicit language and the outlandish sexual exploits of his soldier characters. Although the writing style, the accounts of Pacific Realm events, esprit de corps and the insight into the horrors of war eventually won the critics over. The work has since been recognized in some circles as maybe the best war time classic ever written.

The Naked and the Dead" is a story that is seen through the eyes of an entire platoon of soldiers. Although seen as a group, each individual is detailed and has his own life. These individual lives are battered by the horrors of war and the associated personal and group tragedies and desires that also come with war. Mailer depicts the platoon as individual soldiers that must battle the Japanese army on an island in the Pacific as they battle inner demons. Even as they fight and win, the war presents unique challenges that even victory can not overcome. Like Shohei's characters, Mailer shows that war puts soldiers, young men, into situations well beyond their control while pointing out that these situations were not caused by the individuals. War is the antagonist.

Mailer uses the unique style that shows both aspects of a soldier's life. The character is in a situation thousands of miles away from his home, life and family. but, at the same time Mailer details in contrast the wives and families these soldiers left at home. Mailer shows both the positives and the negatives of young men and women being separated by war.

Mailer's soldiers are in hell as they have to content with the daily tedium that all soldiers experience in between the life and death battles. This contrast shows how and why war can be so brutal. Like Shohei, Mailer shows the social breakdowns that the confrontation inevitably creates. Throughout the book, the downtime for the platoon provides fuel for disorder and conflict. One may even consider the fact that the true enemy was not the Japanese. The true enemy came form the individual soldiers as they lived… READ MORE

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