The Caine Mutiny

Rating:
Summary: One Of The Best Books I Have Ever Read
Review: The Caine Mutiny seems to be a true story of the Navy in World War II and a vivid unusual story all-in-one. The Navy routines and duties are accurately portrayed and are entrancingly portrayed.

Character development is exceptional in the book. Willie Keith, Captain Queeg, Tom Keefer, and even Steve Maryk were developed brilliantly so that you liked Willie, felt sorry and hated Queeg at the same time, puzzled over Keefer and felt sorry for Maryk.

The plot was exceptionally done with some very detailed descriptions of the outrages of Captain Queeg and the shaky love affair between May Winn and Willie Keith and many other sideplots filling up the many enchanting pages of the book.

One thing that I really enjoyed at the end of the book was that when you finished, you really weren't sure if the right or wrong thing had been done. Wouk leaves that to the reader's percerption insted of laying it straight out on the line. It was your choice whether or not to like or not to like how the story ended.

This is by far one of the best books I have ever read. To finish my review I will quote my late grandfather, "The Caine Mutiny is the perfect story of the Navy and Willie Keith is the personification of the enlisted Navy."

Rating:
Summary: The Caine Mutiny- a novel for the ages
Review: There are two types of books written by authors-those which appeal only to critics and those which appeal to the general public. This is a prime example of the latter(the ease of the vocab used helps). With brilliant imagery and lots of Navy jargon (which I didn't understand before I read the book), Herman Wouk conveys to us the story aboard the USS Caine during WWII. He gives us deep charachters with Willie Keith, Steve Maryk and Tom Keefer,and he creates a legend with Captain Phillip Francis Queeg. He makes us think. A classic.

Rating:
Summary: Review of The Caine Mutiny
Review: This book was required reading for one of my classes. I chose it on the basis of the very posotive feedback I received from peers and others who have read the book. Although the font size is miniature, and there are 498 pages of it, I found myself wishing there were more than 498 pages. I didn't want it to stop! A story of life in the Navy under a tyranical captain from a rising rookie ensign's view point gives the reader a first hand "experience" of the ups and downs of life in the Navy. Although the book is fictional, Herman Wouk was in the Navy and uses jargon that paints a clear picture and prooves to the reader that he knows what he's talking about. This is by far the best required reading I've ever had.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite World War II Novel
Review: This is my favorite of the great World War II novels and I've read many of the great ones, which includes Mailer's "The Naked & the Dead" and James Jones' "From Here to Eternity."

Wouk broke much ground with this novel and the Pulitzer was well earned. The superb court martial, Willie Keith's coming of age, and of course who can forget Phillip Francis Queeg, perhaps the most famous modern naval captain in fiction?

With a wonderful assortment of characters and a superb plot, we see Willie Keith go from naive and arrogant young college graduate, to a mature tempered man who has endured the fires of war. It is a novel to be read and reread. The movie version with Humphrey Bogart isn't bad either. But as they say, the book is always better.

Rating:
Summary: A ripping novel of World War Two in the US Navy.
Review: This is perhaps not the greatest novel ever written about World War Two, but it may be the most readable. This is an engrossing, ingenious, and well-written story of ordinary men at sea, placed in an uncommon predicament. Their predicament is simple: their captain is a spectacularly bad leader. This leads to consequences that Wouk develops brilliantly. Wouk's own experience in the US Navy gives this book a gritty authentic feel. The reader really gets a flavor of what it must have been like to be a junior US Naval officer aboard a destroyer-minesweeper. The discussions of officer efficiency reports, the codebreaking duty, casual discipline, and more, all ring true.

The real story is the maturation of Willie Keith. At the beginning of the novel he is a spoiled, overprivileged lad living an aimless life. His time in the service, and the unusual predicament in which he finds himself, hardens him into a true fighting-man in a way that has happened to countless thousands of servicemen. Wouk tells this story exceedingly well, in a manner that most readers will be able to easily relate to. I found this novel to be an unusually good read primarily for this reason. Wouk's writing is first-rate, and it is easy to see why this novel appealed to readers of the early 1950s, many of them with fresh memories of World War Two. The flavor of that war lingers in the novel even today, and gives the twenty-first century reader a notion of what those times were like.

This is altogether a remarkably good novel, deserving of every one of its five stars.

Rating:
Summary: I appreciate it even more on my third read
Review: This is perhaps the third time I have read The Caine Mutiny and now with a little age under my belt, I appreciate it even more. Of course, the story is about a mutiny aboard the vintage destroyer minesweeper The Caine, during the Second World War. Most everyone is familar with Humphrey Bogarts outstanding rendition of Captain Queeg in the 1954 movie version of the book. Although other reviews have focused on the plot and character development (both which I think are excellent), I would like to address two themes which Wouk weaves throughout the book- the use, or should I say misuse, of psychology, and the issue of leadership.

The mutiny, the defense and the acquittal of the Executive Office Mayrk, all revolved around psychological theories of mental illness. The officers, especially Keefer, see Queegs erratic behavior as symptomatic of psychological illness. As their dissatisfaction of the Queegs leadership grows, the more they theorize about his mental stability. Of course, as we see at the end of the book, Queeg did not suffer as much from a psychological problem, as he did from character deficiencies. Greenwald, the attorney for the defense, is able to turn the words of the Freudian psychologist (an expert witness for the prosecution) back upon him, so the psychologist admits that Queeg must have been mentally ill at the time of the mutiny. I find it ironic that using that logic, most readers of this review would be found mentally incompetent as well. What makes this novel successful (aside from good writing) is that Wouk taps into Americas love affair with psychology as the explanation for human behavior. The building of character takes second place to the building of ones self-esteem and mental health. It is a formula for disaster for our society today, as it was for the officers and crew of the Caine.

This brings us to the second issue- leadership. It is particularly ironic that Keefer, the real instigator of the mutiny, the junior officer who most lack character, fails when he finally becomes captain of the Caine- he buckles under pressure and prematurely abandons ship after it is attacked leaving our hero, Willie Keith, in charge. As a result of his heroism, Willie becomes the Caines last captain. It is only under the weight of leadership that both Keefer and Keith begin to realize how difficult leadership is and the stress that Queeg was under. They discover that it is easier to complain than to lead, to foment dissension than to encourage, and to second-guess than to take responsibility.

Any complaints? Yes one. The portrayal of the black seamen who served as orderlies reflects that time long past. Was there not one back sailor on board who spoke and acted like a man? Of course there was, but too bad Wouk restored to racist stereotypes in his portrayal of these sailors.

Rating:
Summary: No Mutiny: Little Action But Lots of Words
Review: When THE CAINE MUTINY was first published in 1952, it became an instant hit since the memories of the Second World War were still quite fresh in the collective minds of the adult American public. Further, the intense psychological give and take which forms the bulk of the last one third of the novel reflected the growing fascination with Freudian theories of personality. Adding to the sales was the engrossing film version with Bogie twirling steel balls on the witness stand. However, with the passing of decades, enough time has gone by to permit a more balanced view of Herman Wouk's attempt to portray the stresses that war has on a mind that lacks flexibility. What emerges is a novel that is so lacking in strong characters and reader involvement that one now can wonder why readers even now try to plow through the nearly 400 pages of mind numbing text before the only good part emerges: Queeg on the stand.

The book opens with what is surely one of the weakest portrayals of a protagonist in 20th century literature: Willie Kieth, who comes across as a feckless and uninteresting naval cadet. As I was reading several hundred pages of his supposed growth from callowness to maturity, I soon enough realized that Kieth could not carry the book on his vapid smile and non-existent character. Fortunately, Wouk includes a number or secondary characters who spice up the action. Unfortunately, by the time I come across these backups, I have had to read more than one half way through. The romantic female interest for Keith is his feminine doppleganger, May Winn, who seems to exist only to prize the dubious value of her probably non-existent virtue over any revealing insights into her relation with Willie Kieth. Keith's comrades on the Caine are infinitely more interesting. Clearly, Wouk sets up his book to point to the courtroom confrontation between attack defensive lawyer Barney Greenwald and Captain Queeg. This part, despite the incessant references to Freudian illness, is Wouk's most compelling achievement.

What one takes away today after having read THE CAINE MUTINY is a sense that war truly does warp personalities that are already inclined to be warped. Yet, an author owes his reading public a more believable set of literary conventions and writing skills that were so clearly lacking here. When Keith leaves the book as one who has been reviled even by the man assigned to protect him, I got the feeling that Wouk wrote THE CAINE MUTINY as a huge inside joke that illustrates that a book that masks a dearth of conventional literary tropes needs only a "hook" to reel in a series of readers eager to discover some eternal truths about warfare only to discover that the price to learn them is a Queeg-like capitualtion to those same harsh truths.