No matter what they cannot break my step.
I fought,
I scratched
And I believed.
I am still here no longer fighting,
But living above the battlefield;
breathing in the fresh air of victory as the wounds of war
Are but a mark of pride
And how strong I have become.
Two boys fight in the mud.
The pain of a fist
Is dampened in the rain.
Their tears are washed away.
One sat on the other’s bench,
And action soon came from anger
Now the noble cause has disappeared
And all that matters is the end,
of course.
The winner,
Will stand
– With the same taste sharp of blood on his tongue –
As the loser at his feet.
What point does victory serve
When it is nothing but a proven pretender?
4/5 This photo gives you an idea of the weight of Norman Mailer’s novel. If you have a couple of weeks of rainy days then it might be worth sitting inside and picking this up! Essentially it is 700 pages of character profiles, and the immoralities involved in WWII, based on Mailer’s own experiences in the Philippines.
If you had to relate it to another piece of work i would say it is a more serious version of Catch-22, showing the inescapability of War and the institutions within it.
Start With Your Pen 