The Caine Mutiny (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

The sea was the one thing in Willie’s life that remained larger than Queeg. The captain had swelled in his consciousness to an all-pervading presence, a giant malice and evil; but when Willie filled his mind with the sight of the sea and the sky, he could, at least for a while, reduce Queeg to a sickly well-meaning man struggling with a job beyond his powers.

If I had read the ending of The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk first (as I have sometimes done in the past with books), perhaps it would not have taken me over three months to finish reading the novel. I was seriously considering giving up my goal of reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners. Something within me rebelled against the story. Perhaps, I couldn’t stand yet another war novel. Perhaps I was convinced that at the end of the book a likeable character would be hung for mutiny. Perhaps I am too tired of reading real-life stories of the abuse by people in power. This week, I finally forced myself to finish the last three hundred pages of the 500+ page book in one day. In the end, I appreciated Wouk’s storytelling ability and felt that I had a glimpse of the 1950’s mindset. While The Caine Mutiny is a novel about war, it is also a “coming of age” story.

Even before The Caine Mutiny was a film, it read like a 1950’s movie. It contains the classic scenes of love, bravery, and courtroom drama. The novel takes us from Willie’s first days in the Navy to his last. For me, Willie is sometimes an antihero and other times a hero. What impressed me most about the book was how, scene by scene, Wouk builds the events that lead to the mutiny aboard the Caine, a minesweeper. In the courtrooms scenes, Wouk helps the reader understand Captain Queeg, the captain the men rebel against, as well as the nature of command in the Navy. The courtroom scenes and the conclusion of the novel made me question the perspective I originally had about the mutiny.

I keep on feeling that I am comparing apples to oranges when I compare my experiences of reading the Pulitzer winners to my experiences of reading other types of novels. The Caine Mutiny, the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner,  is a thought provoking, well-crafted novel. My escapist fiction loving personality did not enjoy reading the novel, though toward the end I found my reading rhythm. The Pulitzer winners provide a different type of pleasure, one of experiencing admirable craftsmanship.