Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1972 The aP radox of Victory: the American Soldier in the Novel of World War II. Ira Eugene Hindman Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Hindman, Ira Eugene Jr, "The aP radox of Victory: the American Soldier in the Novel of World War II." (1972). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 2217. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/2217 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This dissertation was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. 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University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company 72-28,352 HINDMAN, Jr., Ira Eugene, 1931- THE PARADOX OF VICTORY: THE AMERICAN SOLDIER IN THE NOVEL OF WORLD WAR II. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1972 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company (Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1972 IRA EUGENE HINDMAN JR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE PARADOX OF VICTORY: THE AMERICAN SOLDIER IN THE NOVEL OF WORLD WAR II A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Ira Eugene Hindman, Jr. B.A., Roberts Wesleyan College, 1955 B.D., Asbury Theological Seminary, 1958 M.A., Stetson University, 1965 Hay* 1972 PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Lewis P. Simpson for his many important suggestions and his many hours of assistance that led to the completion of this study. I should also like to thank the other members of my doctoral committee: Dr. Darwin H. Shrell, Dr. Jack G. Gilbert, Dr. John Hazard Wildman, and Dr. Burl L. Noggle. ii TABLE OP CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT............................. ill TABLE OF CON T E N T S ..................................... iv ABSTRACT ............................................. V INTRODUCTION ......................................... viii CHAPTER I. COMING OF AGE IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION .... 1 II. PRE-WAR LITERATURE .......................... 50 III. THE COMING OF W A R ............................ 84 IV. INDUCTION: FROM CIVILIAN TO SOLDIER IN THE WORLD WAR II N O V E L ................... 104 V. TRAINING: LEARNING THE ART OF SURVIVAL IN THE WORLD WAR II NOVEL ................... 150 VI. COMBAT: "PRO PATRIA MORI” IN THE WORLD WAR II NOVEL ................... 219 VII. DEFEAT IN VICTORY: THE NOVELISTS' VISION OF THE F U T U R E ........................ 276 CONCLUSION ........................................... 334 LIST OF WORKS C I T E D ...................................... 337 VITA ................................................. 345 iii ABSTRACT The catastrophic events of World War II have remained in the American writer's consciousness for thirty years— there are still occasional "war novels" written today. But twenty-five years ago the War was an ascendent reality and an unusually large number of war novels was being written. This study is concerned with that first flood of Second World War novels. America emerged from World War II a victor. But it is the contention of this dissertation that most of the American novelists who wrote of the War found little in the victory to cheer them. There were a few novelists who continued, in spite of a world aflame, to reflect the optimism of a waning liberal socialism. There were many more who, overwhelmed by the darkness they saw in human nature and in the world that man had made a grim reflection of himself, either retreated into nihilism or sought, painfully and with little success, some small hope for the future of the individual. The novels of these latter novelists are permeated by a pessimism that arises out of their recognition of the high cost that the individual had to pay in order for the nation to achieve victory. That cost, according to the iv V novelists, included lives spent, limbs lost, and minds broken; but more significantly, it included the enslave­ ment of the will and the brutalization of the spirit. In other words, it cost the individual his humanity. Despair at the cost, not joy in the victory, is the underlying motif that is discovered in the Second World War novel. This study is also concerned with the origins of the war novelists' sense of despair. The antecedents of their despair, the study suggests, are found in the three decades of history that preceded their writing, in the literary forces that they inherited, and in the inhumanity that they found in military life. World War I, the abortive "war to end wars," shocked a rather naive generation into the reality of man's potential for evil, convinced them that many of their father's values were untenable, and sent them on a search for what security they could find in a decade of prosperity. When the vision of prosperity evaporated into the nightmare of depression, their distrust of traditional values deepened. Those who were aware of literary traditions, and certainly the young men who were to write the World Wax II novels were, could not escape current literary patterns. They had to react to the cynical assessment of traditional values suggested by the writers of the 1920's and the even more despairing judge­ ments leveled by the writers of the 1930's. Then came Selective Service. It appeared to the novelists that vi personal freedom and individuality had been replaced by the rigidly proscribed life of military uniformity. With the final blow to humane values, an insane war that seemed to deny any human goodness, the novelists were convinced. They had read the evidence; their conclusion was that life was war, and defeat was its end. The future of the indi­ vidual did not appear at all promising to them. INTRODUCTION It is the thesis of this study that, in spite of the American victory in World War II, most American novels dealing with the War demonstrate despair of a peaceful and humane future* Part One is concerned with the early sources of this despair. It rests upon the thesis that their experience of pre-World War II America is a direct and significant source, if implicit, of the despair that novelists expressed in their war novels; it examines the source of the attitudes given by novelists to the American soldier in the World War II novel. Presenting in very broad terms the American milieu between World Wars, Part One focuses primarily upon the 1930's, a period of changing values when entrenched American self-satisfaction was giving away to an increasingly bitter disillusionment with that mystique of success and moral superiority that Americans had come to think of as their special birthright. The future novelists' experience taught them to question all voices whether political, social, or moral. When they entered military life they were, unlike their World War I counterparts, already confused about their values, distrustful of their country's values, and unsure about the world and their future in it. When they came to describe their experience of war in fictional terms, they viii wrote their own bewilderment with and despair for their culture into the attitudes of their soldiers’ characters. The second part of this study deals with the World War II novels themselves. Its focus is upon the American soldiers' experience of and response to military life as presented within these novels. The transformation of the soldier, within the novel, from civilian to combat veteran provides the novelists with an opportunity to examine their soldiers' (and thus their own culture's) values and attitudes under conditions of extreme stress. In some of the novels the soldier is made to reaffirm the traditional values as still valid.