Caine mutiny book movie#
Caine mutiny book full#
Caine mutiny book trial#

It's the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. You can't understand command till you've had it. I feel more sympathy for Queeg than you ever will, unless you get a command. Whittaker brought me the ice cream and said 'They ain't no mo' strawberries,' Has any of you gentlemen an explanation of the missing quart of strawberries?' > 'Gentlemen, ten minutes before I called this meeting, I sent down for some ice cream and strawberries. This book, with its narrower view and ambitions, works much better. I recently read McKenna's 'The Sand Pebbles,' also set on an American warship. It's fun, and I think Wouk succeeds in conveying the characters and setting. And I would have liked an even longer story, too. He seems to feel the need to hit us on the head with a moral.Д«ut for all that, I still enjoyed the story.

Caine mutiny book trial#

I think the book would have been more powerful had Wouk ended it right at the trial instead of after the trial and a long denouement. Particularly the trial, in which Wouk feels the need to repeat the descriptions of every incident that we've already seen. This was a runaway best seller, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Broadway production that became the movie, The Caine Mutiny was, is and will always be a stirring document of men under stress for days and months at a time, and what that stress, driven by the wrong man, can become. This book is as powerful seventy years after it was written as the day it first hit the bookstores. And framing the war story is a star-crossed romance. It is like a magic trick that takes you over, pulling you in. There is so much more as Wouk manages to make the boredom of ship life not boring at all. There is the вЂњwho ate the last quart of strawberriesвЂќ incident and the thing that caused the crew and officers alike to name Queeg вЂњYellow Stain.вЂќ The helmsman who is disciplined for not waiting for the CaptainвЂ™s instructions, and then disciplined for awaiting instruction when the Skipper was busy bawling out a sailor for not having his shirttail tucked in properly. You can feel the days stretch out, the sun baking the metal of the hull, the stack exhaust gases falling and staying on the decks when the wind stalls, and the increasing unease of all involved.

Caine mutiny book movie#

You may have seen the powerful movie with Bogart starring but, as in just about every adaptation of a novel, there s so much left out. Lieutenant Commander Queeg assumes command and Willie thinks he is going to have a good life. Then he feels relief when a new shipвЂ™s captain appears to replace the old. Things are difficult for him as a pampered son of a well to do family, but somehow he manages to cope and get slightly better month after month. We see his difficulties fitting into the Navy life, his misunderstandings with the captain, his attempts to fit in with the officers and his rapport with the crew.

We follow him throughout the course of his war, from being fresh meat at an OCS type Navy school to his arrival on the dank ship Caine. Young Willie Keith, fresh from Princeton and dabbling away at being a piano player in a New York city bar, joins the Navy. But with the coming of the war there is an inrush of the citizen sailor.

Caine mutiny book full#

The Caine is a relic of another war and initially manned by a full time Regular Navy crew. This book gives the reader a true feel for the days of the war upon a former WWI destroyer that has been converted to minesweeping duties.

And it is the aftermath of the trial that winds down the tale and offers the reader a chance to decide the justice of it all. It is what leads up to it that garners the greatest interest for the reader. The actual movements of the mutiny only take a few pages of the story. And finally it isnвЂ™t really about a mutiny, even though that is one of the central pivots of the novels. It is not about love and dreams even though the main character, Willie Keith, is something of both natures. One of the mighty novels to come out of the Second World War, this is not a story of heroism although there are plenty of heroes within the pages.