The first edition, second impression, of Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel set during the Second World War. The war is over, but you could find a Willie Keith, Tom Keefer, Steve Meryk, or Captain Queeg still out there in plenty, and if you are very lucky, a Greenwald to argue your case.Cloth. It reads as well today, and has the same kind of relevance, as it did in the 1950s. Some of their choices are questionable, but this is not one of them this book deserves the recognition. I am reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners, and I have found the committee doesn’t always get it right. I thoroughly enjoyed this unique view of World War II. Chaos makes for mistakes, and they are seldom all made by just one person. One thing that a good leader has is the respect and support of his men, and when there is no respect or confidence in the leader, there is chaos. But it was a minor part of the book and did not detract from the realism of life aboard the Caine and the emotional strain and everyday details of a wartime navy.Īt the end of this novel, we have a more mature and balanced Willie Keith, and by the end of this novel, I had a more balanced and mature view of the events that led up to the mutiny.

Somehow it also did not fit quite perfectly with the impression I had of who Willie was. I found it less believable or even understandable than the shipboard tale. I could have done without the side love story.

He is a despicable, weak, insecure bully, and he deserves the hatred and lack of respect that he gets from his crew, but does that make the mutiny correct and unavoidable? Like Willie, my view of the events changes over the course of the novel, and I find that Queeg is not the only despicable, cowardly man on this ship. Waok created one of the clearest, most memorable characters in American fiction in Captain Queeg. By the end of the book, he is a man and he has learned a lot about what being a man entails, including that life is seldom black and white. Caine straight out of officer’s training. Willie Keith is young, green and naive when he is assigned to the U.S.S. I think you could say The Caine Mutiny is a coming of age story.

The caine mutiny by herman wouk