The Thin Red Line (novel)

Last updated
The Thin Red Line
ThinRedLine.JPG
First edition
Author James Jones
LanguageEnglish
Genre War novel
Publisher Charles Scribner's Sons
Publication date
September 17, 1962 [1]
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages510
OCLC 7640500

The Thin Red Line is American author James Jones's fourth novel. It draws heavily on Jones's experiences at the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse during World War II's Guadalcanal campaign. The author served in the United States Army's 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division.

Contents

Novel

The Thin Red Line, originally published in September 1962, [2] shares its central characters with Jones's other two World War II novels, though with their names necessarily altered, and examines their different reactions to combat. Jones had originally intended the central male characters of his previous war novel From Here to Eternity to appear in this work. But Jones remarked that "the dramatic structure—I might even say the spiritual content—of the first book demanded that Prewitt be killed at the end of it". Jones tackled the problem by changing the names of the three characters of the first novel, enabling them to appear in The Thin Red Line. The character of Prewitt became Witt, Warden became Welsh and Stark became Storm. [2] (Jones's later novel Whistle (1978), features a similar set of characters, now named Sergeant Mart Winch, Bobby Prell, and Johnny "Mother" Strange; Corporal Fife in The Thin Red Line also reappears as company clerk Marion Landers in Whistle.)

The novel portrays battle realistically, including several particularly gruesome acts depicted as natural responses to the soldiers' environment, such as the disinterring of a Japanese corpse for fun, the summary execution of Japanese prisoners, and the extraction of their corpses' gold teeth. The novel explores the idea that modern war is an extremely personal and lonely experience in which each soldier suffers the emotional horrors of war by himself.

James Jones wrote his novel based on his personal experiences during the battle of the Galloping Horse, the Sea Horse, and Kokumbona which he renamed "The Dancing Elephant", "The Sea Slug", and "Bunabala". [3] Of particular significance, Jones recounts his own experience killing a Japanese soldier with his bare hands.

The title comes from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from the collection Barrack-Room Ballads , in which Kipling describes foot soldiers as "the thin red line of 'eroes". Kipling's poem is based on the 1854 action of British soldiers during the Crimean War called The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava).

Reception

Kirkus Reviews praised the novel in 1962, commenting that the novel's "well-drawn battle narrative provides take-off points for dozens of character studies, and the author describes emotional responses to battle, fear, death, homosexuality, along with detached, ironic comments on army organization and the workings of fate, luck and circumstance". [4] Paul Christle, speaking at a conference in 2002, said of the novel, "The Thin Red Line is the only novel of Jones's war quartet that actually deals with combat, and it pulls no punches in its treatment. Reviewers, critics and scholars have lauded it for its realism. Some, myself included, would place the novel in the domain of literary naturalism because the destinies of Jones's soldiers are determined by chance and by social, economic, psychological, and political forces beyond their control and, sometimes, even beyond their recognition". [5]

British historian and military writer John Keegan nominated The Thin Red Line as, in his opinion, one of only two novels portraying Second World War combat that could be favorably compared to the best of the literature to arise from the First World War (the other was Flesh Wounds (1966) by British writer David Holbrook). [6] Paul Fussell said that it was "perhaps the best" American WWII novel, better than A Walk in the Sun and The Naked and the Dead . [7]

Film versions

The novel has been adapted for cinema twice, first as Andrew Marton's The Thin Red Line in 1964, then as Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line in 1998.

Related Research Articles

<i>From Here to Eternity</i> 1953 film directed by Fred Zinnemann

From Here to Eternity is a 1953 American romantic war drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and written by Daniel Taradash, based on the 1951 novel of the same name by James Jones. It deals with the tribulations of three United States Army soldiers, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra, stationed on Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed portray the women in their lives. The supporting cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Philip Ober, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, Claude Akins, and George Reeves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terrence Malick</span> American filmmaker (born 1943)

Terrence Frederick Malick is an American filmmaker. His films include Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), for which he received Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award nominations, The New World (2005), and The Tree of Life (2011), which garnered him another Best Director Oscar nomination and the Palme d'Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival.

<i>The Thin Red Line</i> (1998 film) 1998 film by Terrence Malick

The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It is the second film adaptation of the 1962 novel by James Jones, following the 1964 film. Telling a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, it portrays U.S. soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, and Ben Chaplin. The novel's title alludes to a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he calls British foot soldiers "the thin red line of heroes", referring to the stand of the 93rd Regiment in the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War.

The Thin Red Line may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava)</span> Episode in the Battle of Balaclava

The Thin Red Line described an episode of the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War. In the incident, around 500 men of the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders led by Sir Colin Campbell, aided by a small force of 100 walking wounded, 40 detached Guardsmen, and supported by a substantial force of Turkish infantrymen, formed a line of fire against the Russian cavalry. Previously, Campbell's Highland Brigade had taken part in actions at the Battle of Alma and the Siege of Sevastopol. There were more Victoria Crosses presented to the Highland soldiers at that time than at any other. The event was lionised in the British press and became an icon of the qualities of the British soldier in a war that was arguably poorly managed and increasingly unpopular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Jones (author)</span> American writer

James Ramon Jones was an American novelist renowned for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. He won the 1952 National Book Award for his debut novel, From Here to Eternity, which was adapted for film a year later and made into a television series a generation later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Fussell</span> American cultural and literary historian

Paul Fussell Jr. was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America's class system. Fussell served in the 103rd Infantry Division during World War II and was wounded in fighting in France. Returning to the US, Fussell wrote extensively and held several faculty positions, most prominently at Rutgers University (1955–1983) and at the University of Pennsylvania (1983–1994). He is best known for his writings about World War I and II, which explore what he felt was the gap between the romantic myth and the reality of war; he made a "career out of refusing to disguise it or elevate it".

<i>The New World</i> (2005 film) 2005 film by Terrence Malick

The New World is a 2005 historical romantic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick, depicting the founding of the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement and inspired by the historical figures Captain John Smith, Pocahontas of the Powhatan tribe, and Englishman John Rolfe. It is the fourth feature film written and directed by Malick.

<i>The Thin Red Line</i> (1964 film) 1964 film by Andrew Marton

The Thin Red Line is a 1964 American war film directed by Andrew Marton and starring Keir Dullea, Jack Warden, James Philbrook, and Kieron Moore. Based on James Jones's 1962 novel of the same name, the film follows the lives of a number of American soldiers during the battle of Guadalcanal.

<i>Rifles for Watie</i> 1957 childrens novel by Harold Keith

Rifles for Watie is a children's novel by American writer Harold Keith. It was first published in 1957, and received the Newbery Medal the following year.

A war novel or military fiction is a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting, where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the effects of, or recovering from war. Many war novels are historical novels.

<i>From Here to Eternity</i> (novel) 1951 novel by James Jones

From Here to Eternity is the debut novel of American author James Jones, published by Scribner's in 1951. Set in 1941, the novel focuses on several members of a U.S. Army infantry company stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

<i>Whistle</i> (novel) 1978 novel by James Jones

Whistle (1978), a novel by James Jones, tells the story of four wounded South Pacific veterans brought back by hospital ship to the United States during World War II. Much of the story takes place in a veterans hospital in the fictional city of Luxor, Tennessee.

<i>In Parenthesis</i> 1937 work of literature by David Jones

In Parenthesis is a work of literature by David Jones first published in England in 1937. Although Jones had been known solely as an engraver and painter prior to its publication, the book won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Based on Jones's own experience as an infantryman in the First World War, In Parenthesis narrates the experiences of English private John Ball in a mixed English-Welsh regiment, starting with embarkation from England and ending seven months later with the assault on Mametz Wood during the Battle of the Somme. The work employs a mixture of lyrical verse and prose, is highly allusive, and ranges in tone from formal to Cockney colloquial and military slang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles W. Davis</span>

Charles Willis Davis was a United States Army officer and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in World War II.

Saar Klein is an Israeli-American film editor and director, who has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Film Editing for The Thin Red Line and for Almost Famous, and who received an ACE Eddie Award for editing the latter one.

<i>The Great War and Modern Memory</i> 1975 book of literary criticism written by Paul Fussell

The Great War and Modern Memory is a book of literary criticism written by Paul Fussell and published in 1975 by Oxford University Press. It describes the literary responses by English participants in World War I to their experiences of combat, particularly in trench warfare. The perceived futility and insanity of this conduct became, for many gifted Englishmen of their generation, a metaphor for life. Fussell describes how the collective experience of the "Great War" was correlated with, and to some extent underlain by, an enduring shift in the aesthetic perceptions of individuals, from the tropes of Romanticism that had guided young adults before the war, to the harsher themes that came to be dominant during the war and after.

Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma is a military memoir of World War II by George MacDonald Fraser, the author of The Flashman Papers series of novels. Quartered Safe Out Here was first published in 1993.

<i>Knight of Cups</i> (film) 2015 film by Terrence Malick

Knight of Cups is a 2015 American experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and produced by Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green and Ken Kao. The film features an ensemble cast, starring Christian Bale as the central character.

The red line, or "to cross the red line", is a phrase used worldwide to mean a figurative point of no return or line in the sand, or "the fastest, farthest, or highest point or degree considered safe."

References

  1. "Books Today". The New York Times : 28. September 17, 1962.
  2. 1 2 "The Thin Red Line". Jamesjonesliterarysociety.org. Archived from the original on 2011-08-07. Retrieved 2012-11-02.
  3. "Biography of James Jones", the epilogue of "Whistle" by James Jones in the 2010 electronic version published by Open Road Integrated Media.
  4. "THE THIN RED LINE | Kirkus Reviews" via www.kirkusreviews.com.
  5. Christie, Patrick (February 2, 2002). "James Jones, Terrence Malick, and The Thin Red Line" (PDF). christle.freeshell.org. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  6. Keegan, John. The Face of Battle . Barrie & Jenkins Ltd 1988. p. 250.
  7. Fussell, Paul (1989). Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War . Oxford University Press. pp.  290. ISBN   0-19-503797-9. LCCN   89002875.