The Caine Mutiny

by Herman Wouk

Libby ebook 1,769 pages (on my phone in my font size . . . )

Published: 1951 (this version 2013)

Genre: historical fiction, WWII, navy

 

I try to read at least one "classic" work each year. I recognize so many titles and yet have so many unread! This one was interesting on a variety of levels . . . it's a war story, a coming-of-age story, a love story . . . and a study of human nature.

 

Willie Keith is the protagonist. Wealthy, spoiled, immature. He plays piano and doesn't have much drive. He's a mama's boy who's in for an awakening when joining the US Navy during wartime.

 

Most of the time, I enjoyed the story. Finishing it on Veteran's Day (11/11/22) was ironic. I was subbing and one hour was a panel discussion with members of each branch of the military. I didn't have time to talk with any of the Navy guys, but I wonder how much of the tedious rule-following and quirky leadership translates from WWII to today.

 

Chapter 6: Willie's dad sends him a letter which is pretty amazing in its entirety, but I noted this one part. (Willie is out at sea.)

 

It seems to me that you're very much like our whole country - young, näive, spoiled and softened by abundance and good luck, but with an interior hardness that comes from your sound stock. This country of ours consists of pioneers, after all, . . . people who had the gumption to get up and go and make themselves better lives in a new world.

 

That observation seems to stand true today. Yet more people (of many ages) seem to be much more negative and much less determined to make better lives. (Or perhaps less certain about what a better life entails.)

 

Chapter 6:  Also from dad's letter:

I ought to fill up a dozen more sheets, and yet I feel you are pretty good at getting your way - and in other matters any words I might write would make little sense, without your own experience to fill the words with meaning. Remember this, if you can - there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end - only at the end it becomes more obvious.

This part almost made me cry. Time is precious. I have zero regrets about the time I spent just sitting with my mom holding her hand at the end of her life. I wish we had much more of Willie's dad in this book! He goes on in his letter to talk about religion and the Bible. 

 

"It's (The Old Testament) the core of all religion, I think, and there is a lot of everyday wisdom in it. You have to be able to recognize it. That takes time. Meantime get familiar with the words. You'll never regret it. I came to the Bible as I did to everything in life, too late."

Chapter 8: I learned a new word. Usually, I can use context clues to figure it out. Not so much this time. Another sailor is sharing too explicitly.

"Willie was first amused, then disgusted, then fiercely bored, but there seemed no way to turn off the sailor's cloacal drone."

Blogger just put a red squiggle line under "cloacal," but didn't offer a spelling suggestion. So of course I googled the definition! "cloaca: a common cavity at the end of the digestive tract for the release of both excretory and genital products in vertebrates (except most mammals) and certain invertebrates. Specifically, the cloaca is present in birds, reptiles, amphibians, most fish, and monotremes." Colloquially, it's sewage.

Chapter 9: The officers on the ship are shooting the breeze. Keefer (the novelist) is pontificating.

"The nub of this Pacific war is the duel of flying machines. Everything else is as routine as the work of milkmen and filing clerks. All uncertainty and all decision rides with the carriers."

It didn't really surprise me that much of what the sailors did was routine and even boring. "Action" is not desirable in my book, but I know that time can drag when everything is going smoothly. Most of the action for the men on the Caine had to do with the commanding officer DeVriess, then Queeg, provided most of this story's drama.

Chapter 9: Captain DeVriess and the officers are talking. Tom Keefer, Maryk, Tom's brother Roland, and other men are discussing the routine life. DeVriess suggests that Tom ask for a transfer (again) and he'll approve it. Keefer was not optimistic.

"I've given up. This ship is an outcast, manned by outcasts, and named for the great outcast of mankind. My destiny is the Caine. It's the purgatory for my sins."

A few paragraphs later: 

The captain regarded Keefer admiringly. "That's the literary mind for you. I never thought of Caine being a symbolic name - "

"The extra e threw you off, Captain. God always likes to veil his symbols a bit, being, among His other attributes, the perfect literary artist."

And many pages later when Keefer is helping Willie to learn some new ways to speed up his work flow:

"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well be pretending to be one."

Ouch. I wonder how Navy folks feel about this perspective? And if things have changed in the last seventy years.

Chapter 10: This was one of those huge red flags that made me think "Oh no!"

Willie took the message and glanced at it. "Okay, okay. I'll break it in a few minutes." He thrust the sheet in his pocket and looked to sea."

Of course he forgot about it. And it was important. And Captain Queeg was on his way to assume command of the Caine.

Chapter 16: The whole Willie and May relationship was so up and down and back and forth. When he's on leave and they succumb to passion, it wasn't really surprising. But this sentence caught my attention!

It happened; and it happened the more easily because they had both read lots of books which dismissed the rules as pretty primitive taboos and asserted that all morals were relative to time and place.

Wow. Ouch. That was written in 1951. This sentiment . . . is painful to me. Not just premarital sex, but the idea that morals are relative. 

Chapter 32: When Willie is talking to May about the future and she suggests that he become a teacher, he responds with the old adage about those who can, do; those who can't, teach. I HATE THAT ADAGE! But I love May's response.

"The world couldn't exist without teachers."

Chapter 32: When Willie is struggling with his feelings for May and her response, the author makes an observation I like.

He had no way of recognizing the very common impulse of a husband to talk things over with his wife.

Willie was often quite clueless, even after he grew up (especially post-typhoon).

Chapter 33: The court martial trial was interesting but also kind of anti-climatic.

Every officer past the rank of junior-grade lieutenant had served, at one time or another, under an oppressive eccentric. It was simply a hazard of military life.

If that's true, that is kind of sad. Leadership is not easy, but it is vitally important in every human group (family, school, business, government, military, etc.)

Chapter 38: Commanding a vessel. Now that Tom Keefer has become the captain of the Caine, he has some sympathy for Queeg.

It's the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It's a nightmare, unless you're an ox. You're forever teetering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes.

Chapter 40: When Willie becomes captain at the end of the story, he again wants to talk with May. He makes an interesting observation. Going to his new quarters, he thinks of the time he went over a velvet rope at the palace of Versailles and laid on Napoleon's bed.

He was reminded of that now as he stretched out on the bunk of Captain Queeg. He smiled at the association, but he understood it. Queeg was once for all the grand historical figure in his life. Not Hitler, not Tojo, but Queeg.

 

So much of our own experience informs our perspective on history. This reminds me of reading Trevor Noah's book Born a Crime. Many children in South Africa have names like Hitler because that wasn't as offensive as other names like Cecil Rhodes or Leopold. (I just went back and read over my blog entry of that book.) I'm not a history nerd, but I do like to think about things like this. To me, WWII seems like such recent history even though I wasn't alive yet. To young people, I think it seems like old history, along with all the other things they learn about in school (The Great Depression, The American Revolution, etc.)

Chapter 40: I love how Wouk made observations about life and experiences. When Willie knows that he is headed home to decommission the Caine, he is somewhat philosophical.

He spend long night hours on the bridge when there was no need of it. The starts and the sea and the ship were slipping from his life. In a couple of years he would no longer be able to tell time to the quarter hour by the angle of the Big Dipper in the heavens. He would forget the exact number of degrees of offset that held the Caine on course in a cross sea. All the patterns fixed in his muscles, like the ability to find the speed indicator buttons in utter blackness, would fade. This very wheelhouse itself, familiar to him as his own body, would soon cease to exist. It was a little death toward which he was steaming.

This took me a long time to read, but it was worth it. Now when I hear references to Captain Queeg, I'll think of a despotic and petty leader who fixates on control and lacks common sense and wisdom.