‘The Beast and the Seer’: Mailer’s Search for a Hero

Abstract

In the author’s eyes, The Naked and the Dead is not a realistic documentary; it is rather a ‘symbolic’ book, of which the basic theme is the conflict between the beast and the seer in man. The number of events experienced by the one platoon couldn’t possible have happened to any one army platoon in the war, but represent a composite view of the Pacific War, The mountain the platoon attempts to climb represents death and man’s creative urge, fate and man’s desire to conquer the elements — all kinds of things that you’d never dream of separating and stating so baldly.