Other editions of book Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny is a sea yarn. It has been made into a Mad Magazine spoof, several plays, and a Simpsons spoof. It is a full, colorful novel of two main strands. One is the story of Willie Keith; the other is the strange triangle on the old destroyer – minesweeper Caine which results in the almost incredible fact of a mutiny United States Navy Ship in World War II. Willie Keith, through whose eyes the reader sees the Caine Mutiny, starts out as a careless, good humored Princeton boy and ends as the grim and battered captain of The Caine. The story of his growing up is dramatized in his long love affair with May Wynn, who scrapes a living as a singer in the lower reaches of the broadway night-club world. The triangle on the Caine consists of Captain Queeg, a half-comic, half-tragic petty tyrant; his chief executive officer, Lieutenant Maryk , an excellent naval officer but beyond his depth in the tense and frightening situation that develops on the mine-sweeper; and the third in command, Lieutenant Keefer, an embittered, witty intellectual who sparks the the revolt. Paralleling, the experience of a confident young man entering the military life, the novel starts in a humorous and romantic vein. When Willie Keith comes aboard the battle scared tramp called The Caine the tone begins to deepen and the lens to broaden . Tremendous scenes follow – the mounting tension on board as the ship prepares to go into the Kwajalein invasion; the wild panorama of the typhoon off the Philippines in December 1944, at the height of which the mutiny takes place ; and the court martial of Maryk which follows, and which turns on the testimony of Willie Keith. Presenting the reader a surface of swift, vigorous entertainment, The Caine Mutiny also contains a searching, indirect comment on the basic problems of discipline and command in the civilian swelled armed forces of a free country. But this is left to the reader to complete in his own mind, after he has enjoyed the comedy, the long thrilling drama and the moving love story which are the main elements of the structure.

“As a modern sea adventure it is absolutely first-rank reading.” —Lee Rogow, Saturday ReviewThe novel that inspired the now-classic film The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-MartialHerman Wouk’s boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life—and mutiny—on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has achieved the status of a modern classic.“At last! A war story which gives you a rounded view of the way men at war behave…. Here you have a novel which can be read through like an adventure story—fast, straightshooting narrative that goes direct to the point with no weaving and winding, no waste motion, and no agonized soul searching… . The high point of the book, for me, is not the mutiny itself, thrilling though it is. Utterly absorbing is the court-martial…. Don’t miss it.” —Kelsey Guilfoil, Chicago Tribune“The Caine Mutiny has the time sense, the sense of being hopelessly isolated and cut off from home, which every veteran remembers; it has the scope and the skill to reveal how men are tested, exposed, and developed under the long routine of war; finally, it has the slow-fused but inevitably accumulating tension of the mutiny which gives both form and explosive climax to the story.” —Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly