Customer Reviews

The Caine Mutiny

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

Please read this book.
I was assigned it in high school English, and thought, "Oh great, another war book." I took it home, began my first 4 chapter assignment, and realized 3 hours later that I was halfway through it. I finished it the next day. That was ten years ago, and I have been rereading it at least twice a year ever since. I read it to my husband on a cross-country journey and the miles went by like nothing. It never fails to involve me, and I never fail to be moved by the ending.
A few reviewers have said that the book is hard to understand, or that there is too much military jargon, but there really isn't; there was nothing in there that a seventeen-year-old girl couldn't understand (at least, a seventeen-year-old who knows how to spell "squat".)
This book is powerful, funny, insightful, and moving. Don't pass it up.

I first opened this book late one summer evening at the age of twenty-two. Even then, I knew after the first few pages that I was beginning to read a classic. And there is nothing more enjoyable than knowing you are going to be entertained for hours on end by a great story.

It's about a care-free Willis Seward Keith, who enters World War II and the navy as a rich, immature boy, and develops his manhood and maturity through the backdrop of war, and the sufferance of an emotionally disturbed captain.

The boy that goes to war is not the responsible man who comes home. He has the confidence of a man who has learned to lead men, and developed self assurance through his accomplishments rather than his wealth. It is probably how each of us wish that we would develop to the challenges of manhood that define us.

As the book says, Ensign Keith is not the center of the mutiny, but he is to the mutiny the same as the single jewel bearing that opens or closes a vault door.

Herman Wouk is a story-teller of classic stature. His work will always be counted amongst the finest literary achievements.

This is one of the two most memorable books I have ever read. It has been 33 years since I read "The Caine Mutiny." I bought another after the pages of my original could no longer be kept between the covers. That's the best recommendation I can make.

The Caine Mutiny was my first adult novel -- I was 12 when I read it, only a few years after it won the Pulitzer. I had just seen the film, and was surprised to find the book far richer. However much I enjoyed it, however, I nevertheless failed to grasp the points the author was making; that clarity did not appear until I read it again many years later as an Army officer with over fifteen years' service.

I recently read quite a few online reviews, and they reflect a much more contemporary viewpoint -- the original context of the novel is lost in time. One reviewer thought the mood and point of the book were "Faschistic"; others concluded that the point was "it's okay to buck the system." I was reminded of a colleague on the faculty at West Point who was teaching a cadet elective in psychology of abnormal behavior who used a clip of Bogart's performance on the stand at the court-martial as an example of disordered paranoid ideation. Sometimes I wonder what book all these people read!

This is a novel of war, seen through the eyes of a nonprofessional officer of incisive intelligence, one both inside and outside the Navy system and possessed of ability to look beyond the moment. Many readers (or movie fans) somehow completely miss the story's central issue and the critical turn of plot. Captain Queeg was not crazy; he was overwhelmed by the burdens of command, but would probably have muddled through if his officers had managed to put aside petulant resentment and work to compensate for the captain's flaws. Instead, they put a combat vessel out of action during a critical period in the Pacific campaign.

How anyone can misinterpret Wouk's intent is a mystery to me -- the author sets us up for the lawyer Barney Greenwald's famous demolition of the slippery intellectual Tom Keefer, then hammers the point home after the climax when Keefer proves himself no more fit for command than Queeg.

We see this through the eyes (though not the narrative persona) of Willie Keith, whose character matures as the result of hard lessons in the affair; to an extent, this is a Bildungsroman for the character. Are modern readers less perceptive than the frivolous Willie? The author neither proposes a Fascist call for blind obedience nor justifies bucking the system for the sake of independence of thought.

The relevance of the novel is undiminished after more than fifty years; moral dilemmas are the stuff of war, all wars, since war is the most daunting dilemma of all.

Why is this book so great? Why did it win a Pulitzer Prize? Not because it was an engrossing story of the WWII Navy, which it was. Rather because it has all the elements that make a novel great. Herman Wouk is brilliant at characterization and unlike many other good characterizers such as Steven King, he does it almost with the brevity of a Hemingway. With just a few descriptive scenes of Queeg, the reader can already understand him and pity him recognizing that he is not a traditional villain but a flawed and sad neurotic. From the rolling of the balls to the "sinking of his head into his shoulders" to his way of saying "kay" instead of okay, Queeg's flaws are laid out. When he manipulates reality to justify his actions, one can feel sorry for him rather than hate him. He ultimately comes across as a sad and tragic figure. As for the others, Willie Keith is the protagonist and no character undergoes greater growth than him. This is really what the novel is about, Willie's coming of age and it is a great coming of age story. Rather than have his protagonist mature against the crucible of great battle (as he later does with a number of characters in War and Remembrance which is much more of an epic but not as great a novel), he chooses to portray the day to day existence of a backwater minesweeper which is just on the periphery of the war. And by doing so he avoids all the standard cliches which is also what makes this novel great. In the end, the book clearly has no villains except circumstance. Even Keefer, the pseudo-intellectual who really causes all the trouble, is way to self-aware of his own flaws to be villainous (he is mentally healthy by contrast with Queeg who cannot face up to a single flaw or mistake in himself) I could go on and on but this book is an American classic that doesn't seem one bit dated despite its 1951 publication date. I recommend it to anyone who likes literature.

For good reason, Herman Wouk was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his writing of the Caine Mutiny. The book has everything one could ask for in a book. It is incredibly well written. He has in-depth character development. It takes place during a war so action is a prevalent theme. A love story lurks in the background. The conclusion holds one of the greatest courtroom dramas in modern writing.

First the war backdrop: no one describes it better. The reader truly understands the feelings of the crew of the USS Caine. We can see the tension of war as well as the feelings of serving in the Navy. Wouk does not hesitate to illustrate the good and bad of this perspective.

The love story just hangs on throughout the book and keeps the reader on edge attempting to find out what happens. For much of the book it seems the love story is forgotten. Just when it seems that we will never hear what happened, Wouk ties it in unexpectedly but in a very shrewd manner.

Of course the courtroom drama (which went on to spawn a separate play) is the best military court martial story I have read. The reader truly feels as if they are in the courtroom.

Wouk never hesitates to provide a greatd deal of descriptive visualiazations and in-depth character development. These truly aid the reader in his quest to finish teh book. Honestly, I was moved at times and could not wait to find out teh conclusion. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Most Americans have probably seen the classic Humphrey Bogart film adaptation of this book. Indeed, the plots are very similar, and the casting, with one exception, was terrific.

Which brings me to the surprise... Willy Keith. Turns out Willy is really a rich, musically talented New Yorker, a little chubby, and quite immature; not the wooden pretty boy we saw in the Film. Indeed the first 100 pages of the book deal with Willy, his musical career, his relationship with his girlfriend, his troubles as a Navy cadet. Beore he sets foot on the Caine, we have the makings of a film in and of itself.

Wouk carefully shows how events, even facts, which we see with our own eyes, can be interperted in dramatically different ways, how very few issues, and NO people, are drawn in black and white. The characters are robust and multi-dimensional, and the relationships between the officers and crew of the Caine, as well as the seemingly all-powerful Naval commands all boil down to decisions and interpertations of flawed men -- and as the doctors tell us during the court martial, none of them is without some form of mental instability; it's simply a matter of how we compensate or adjust to those shortcomings. All of the major characters go through a fascinating self-assessment process, and wind up as different people by the end.

An engaging, enjoyable book, even for someone who's seen the film a dozen times.

The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk, is an exceptional novel that really brings the navy to life. Joining the navy to avoid the army, Willie Keith, a young, restless piano player from New York, gets swept into a world of water, lunacy, and honor. He draws duty on a rundown old destroyer-minesweeper, the worst job in the entire navy. On top of this is his incompetent and mentally disturbed captain, upon whom a monumental controversy is centered.
I recommend this book because it offers insight into life on a naval ship during the heat of the pacific conflict. Typhoons, kamikazes, and mutinies are just some of the surprises that you will encounter as you read the book. Surprisingly, there isn't any traditional combat, but that just emphasizes the uniqueness of the book. As if that were not enough, add in one loony captain nicknamed Old Yellowstain. You will enjoy searches of the entire ship for a single key, secret logs, and court-martials. Another reason to read this book is that it is a great adventure story. You really get to know Willie Keith as he climbs up the ladder of naval command, defends himself in a courtroom, and dates May Winn, his singer girlfriend. Sometimes you will wish you were right there next to Willie as he sails into combat, and sometimes you will be glad you are sitting at home reading as he is attacked by a kamikaze.
If you are a real action lover, you may be initially disappointed when you cannot find any traditional fights. If gun blazing duels are all you are looking for, this is not the book for you, but if you want high seas adventure, with lots of drama, unexpected incidents, and the ever-present slightly corny love story, dig in! If you are still reading this and not ordering the book already, you should. This book has it all, adventure, romance, drama, and what every book should have, a bit of lunacy. But don't just take my word for it, listen to this opinion from... John Johnson; "This is a great book". Wow, that says it all.

I think I read this book some 15 times. Still every time I close the back cover I feel like I lose contact to good friends: Willie, Steve Maryk, Tom Keefer... and even LtCmdr. Queeg. My all-time-favourite, a must-read.

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"!