The Title
Just out of curiosity. Why is this called "The Naked and the Dead"? It probably would explain why in the book but I haven't read it and It's a little hard to find. I did see the movie thought but even then I didn't get it.
shareGood question.
I thought it might be a line of verse or a saying that Norman Mailer used as an epigraph at the beginning or end of the novel, but I just checked my copy of the book, and it isn't.
If I learn of a specific meaning or reason for the title, I'll post it.
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The book focuses on their thoughts about army, women, society and of course their own lives. Very soon it becomes clear that the war is stripping them "naked" to themselves. Their thoughts and the animal in them become painfully acknowledgeable. And finally, when the war is over, they are either dead, in a spiritual kind of way (they have realised their lives being actually quite empty and useless) or dead, in a physical kind of way.
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Wow, avatkaa_ovi, I wish this movie also had that good stuff in it! But instead it just had two or three inconsistant half-baked philosophical debates and a lot of meandering character development that just glossed over the soldiers that were hard to tell apart.
P.S. - In the scene where Cliff Robertson makes his first appearance, the Sergeant is about to give the order to shoot a bunch of captured Japanese soldiers that were stripped down to their underwear, but the Lieutenant stops him. That's about as far as the movie relates to the title.
I'm here, Mr. Man, I can not tell no lie and I'll be right here till the day I die