Customer Reviews

The Caine Mutiny: A Novel of World War II

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Good literature can transport the reader into the world of the book. Great literature enters the world of the reader. "The Caine Mutiny" is great literature. Many have seen the movie so I can say a little about the story. Set on an obsolete destroyer-minesweeper during World War II, "The Caine Mutiny", seen through the eyes of a young officer, Willie Keith, tells the story of an inadequate captain whose mismanagement leads to his relief from command when a crisis confronts the ship. With romance and a domineering mother, the book intertwines several stories which hold the reader's interest.

Perhaps a Navy veteran would see much about the service in "The Caine Mutiny", I do not know. Although it is set on a naval vessel in wartime, it is much more than a war story, although that it is. I saw much about life in it. It contains instances and characters which I encounter in a life about as far from the Caine as one can imagine. This ability of this book to enter into the world of the reader, even as the reader enters the world of the book, earns "The Caine Mutiny" a place in the canon of great literature.

I enjoy reading, but I cannot remember a book which I was so loath to set down. This book is a real page turner. Years ago my father told me to watch the movie, which I did. I finally took his advise the next step and read the book. Since I cannot return the favor, I will pass it on. READ "THE CAINE MUTINY"!

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.

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.

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."

The Caine Mutiny is the best military fiction that I have ever read. It is well-written and engaging. The characters and situations rang true to me as a former naval officer even though I served more than 50 years after the story was set.
I also recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more about the leadership. It contains everything good and everything bad about leadership, and the lessons that Willie Keith learned aboard the Caine apply in or out of the military.
Overall, The Caine Mutiny is a great story that does not require an interest in the navy or military to enjoy or appreciate.

The book has a broad range of plots, centering around the mutiny and the events preceding. Many other sub-plots, tiny ones, not easily noticed, help to provide a sense of reality to the book and fill in spaces between Queeg's explosions.
May Wynn's love affair is the main theme that opens and closes the book. In the middle, the most important things happen, although very little time is spent in those situations in comparison to the rest of the book. The two consider getting married, write letters back and forth, and break up in the small amount of time given to their affair. This is the largest and most prominent sub-plot in the book.
Although there are many other sub-plots in the book, one of the strongest parts in the book is its vivid detail of situations. The best points are not lengthy, but they capture the feel of the situation in the emotion of the character. The book is almost charismatic in the way it describes the rolling sea, and the raging wind. On page 324, the severity of the storm is emphasized by the words: "...it [the deck] was slanting steeply to starboard... so steeply that he could not stand on it... the deck was remaining slanted."
One point where the plot really was captivating was that things in Willie's life never seemed to go smoothly. He nearly was expelled from the officer school because of his demerits. Then, his late flight caused him to arrive in the port after the ship left. Where things could go wrong for Willie, they did.
Captain Queeg's outbursts led to filling over two hundred of the book's four hundred ninety-eight pages, which seemed to be the more interesting part of the book. The pace of the book increased once he relieved de Vriess. His manner of thinking and dealing with his officers took up most of the storyline from the time the crew left the west coast of the USA to the mutiny, and was possibly the most interesting part of the book.
In contrast to that, the plot seemed to lose momentum after the mutiny. The court-martial had very little action or plot advancement for over sixty pages. It is mostly a battle of words and definitions, and mostly the plot revolves around Greenwald's defense strategy. There was little suspense, little surprises, little plot. The court-martial is more of a review of the past chapters than new events.
Another point which left a bad taste in my mouth is the conclusion of Willie and May Wynn's life. By the end, May seems little more than a filler, something needed to take up space in the novel. Except for the fact that she is Willie's girlfriend she bears no weight or effect on the focus of the novel. After the mutiny, the whole love affair sputters and dies, leaving little interest in the whole mess. Although useful in the beginning of the book, May Wynn did little to help the plot advance after Willie boarded the Caine.
Overall, I feel that the book was worth reading until the court-martial. In the beginning, there are all sorts of challenges to overcome, puzzling situations, and brief yet vivid detail about the ship, the sea, and the emotions of the officers and men. The court-martial is mostly just questions asked and answers given, with little real action. The story afterwards really has little to do with the story before, like a doomed surgery patient with no chance of survival and no reason to go on, just living its pathetic life until the bittersweet end.

This book is . . . absolutely breathtaking. It is no less than a modern masterpiece. Rating it makes me think that all of those other books I have rated as "5" were not worthy of the score.

_The Winds of War_ covers a broad range of areas (all around the world, covering the global war) keeping the reader wherever the action is happening, but without always staying on the actual battlefied. The story of the novel covers the Henry family as its members go about their ways during the war, bringing them to various locations and situations. Pug, the main protagonist, for instance, gets a chance to meet Roosevelt, Hitler, and many more- and that isn't even giving away anything as the book is so long. But long, in this case, is a wonderful thing, as it mean the story continues, so that the reader does not ever get the sense that there is not enough (though, still, I eagerly await reading the sequal, _War and Remembrance_). The book has a huge cast, but they are all such different characters that they never get mixed up, which is an amazing feat with so many influential people in the novel. Wouk is an expert at what he does.

I have done nothing thus far but gush praise for the book, and most of it is just senseless ramblimgs, but I am unable to do anything else, as I did not identifiy any flaw with the perfect storytelling and am not competant to possibly give it justice and so am reduced to just lauding it without clear reason. But the sheer power of this book overwhelms me and twists my toungue (keyboard) in such a way that I cannot truly explain its wonder.

One of the most impressive things about a truly well-written novel is the number of characters that stand out to the reader long after putting the book down. Maryk, Keefer, Keith, and of course Queeg are unforgettable, Queeg in particular, for every one of us--Navy or not--who has suffered under a paranoid perfectionist will recognize Queeg's style in a heartbeat. The strawberry "crisis" is a case in point.

As the novel progresses, young Willie Keith seems to come around to a more Navy-oriented point of view--namely: incompetent and eccentric officers are part of the hazards of war; one must simply make do. At the risk of mistaking Keith for Wouk, I found this a troubling conclusion, given the madness of poor Stilwell, the life-risking incidents aboard the Caine--and of course my own vivid encounters with Queeglike imbeciles too perfectionistically by-the-book to listen to reason or feel even an ounce of empathy for their victims. Chains of command of any kind attract just such personalities. But the consequences should not be passed off as business as usual.

Like any good novelist, Wouk paints the reader vivid pictures of events, scenes, little dramas and big ones. At times you can smell burning oil and hear the curses of overworked sailors. It's pleasant to see Willie Keith grow up with all this as his chosen context.

I read this book several times in my high school years and was captivated by it. I picked it up the other day and sat down to reread it never expecting to make it to the end. But I found myself reading it over a weekend and enjoying every page.
The novel is an amazing testament to Herman Wouk's writing skills in that even though it is now 50 years since it was written, and containing no foul language or any sex, it remains a page turner.
Classic historical fiction. Highly recommended for teens or adults.

This fine novel runs from the time before Pearl Harbor to about the end of 1945, and focuses on Willie Keith, who we meet as a spoiled brat and Princeton WASP, who is living off Daddy and earning a few bucks as a piano player. He joins the Navy for no good reason except to impress a girl, and misadventures his way through his officer training. Slowly, he learns that this is more than a game, and learns to face up to the consequences of his actions, as he turns down a cushy position at Pearl Harbor, staying on the appalling Caine. But the arrival of the slightly warped Queeg both in some ways matures Keith, so that he pushes himself for recognition from the odd captain, and retards his maturity in other ways, so that at the pivotal moment of the mutiny, he joins in for unworthy reasons. It is not until he is nearly killed (and, by the way, saves the horrific Caine) that he is finally willing to face up to himself and decide what is really worthy in his life.

There are many unforgettable characters in this book, not so much Keith, but Queeg, of course, and Lieutenant Keefer, author and cad, who provokes the mutiny out of pique and then runs for cover, and Steve Maryk, the not-so-bright exec who is manipulated into the mutiny and pays by being court martialed and losing any chance of staying in the Navy after the war. And, unforgettably, the flyboy and lawyer, Lt. Barney Greenwald, who comes in to defend Maryk and sees everything for what it really is. Forced by professional duty to destroy Queeg to save his client, he is appalled by his own actions and responds with one of the great speeches in literary annals.

A classic. Wouk's best.