Ignorance And Bigotry In John Mailer's The Time Machine

The "Time Machine" may be a laborious device to enrich our experience with the men on Anopopei, but that is its function. Although Leeds cites Martinez, he might have mentioned any number of other characters. When Gallagher learns of his wife's death, for example, he becomes an important figure in the novel for the first time. At this point Mailer introduces a "Time Machine" section on Gallagher's Boston-Irish background, his training in frustrated prejudice. Just as we first see Gallagher as fully human, stunned by the loss of his wife, Mailer highlights his ignorance and bigotry. Paradoxically, we are all the more impressed by Gallagher's intense feeling for his wife. He becomes a more complex and interesting character than would have been possible had his biography or his mourning been presented alone. Thus, Mailer uses the "Time Machine" to illuminate character, introducing the device at just that moment in the narrative when it best supplements the novel's action.
The "Time Machine" differs, then, from similar devices in the works of John Dos Passos. The "Camera Eye," "Newsreel," and biography sections in U.S.A., for example, are clearly intended to complement the narrative in the manner of a
thesis novel. These sections are not directly related to the narrative; they do not even concern its characters. Instead, they are determined by and substantiate Dos Passos's attack on the American social system. Mailer's use of a similar device is for a quite different end. The "Time Machine" sections are intended to comment on each character's role in the action. When this does not happen--as in the belated "Time Machine" passage devoted to Polack, a figure of no real significance--the reader is likely to find the material digressive, even intrusive. Mailer's novel differs from Dos Passos's trilogy in its use of social elements to clarify a dramatic action, not a social argument.

The theme of loneliness also reoccurs within the novel. Away from their family and friends at home, the soldiers are constantly lonely. The men in their ranks are of different social classes, races, and religions. Often, the men struggle finding commonalities between them. They long for women and deeper friendships. At one point, Roth wishes to have someone who he “could talk to seriously.”[4]:51 He realizes that he doesn’t know his own comrades very well, since everyone he had met when he initially entered the Army was either killed or reassigned somewhere else.

Not surprisingly, death and the fear of dying also invade the war novel. The men are faced with unexpected deaths from Hennessey to Gallagher’s wife to Hearn. It is clear that death surrounds them. Cummings, having been surrounded by Army deaths the majority of his career, still never warms to the smell of dead corpses. Roth, like the other soldiers, realizes that he or one of his comrades could be killed any minute. Like Hennessey or Hearn, death is a gunshot away.

A larger theme, power, is best exemplified through General Cummings himself. Cummings compares himself to the “chief monk” and God throughout the book. He also openly supports the class system within the military, ordering Hearn that as an officer he must accept the “emotional prejudices of his class.” People of higher ranks like Hearn and Cummings, after all, enjoy a better quality of life than the other foot soldiers. They sleep in larger staterooms while the soldiers share small rooms and are jammed into cots. This power system is reinforced within the missions themselves. After Hearn dies, Croft takes over leading the platoon up the mountain. While the other soldiers clearly want to stop and give up, they continue hiking the mountain simply because their authority figure, Croft, demands that they not give up. Thus, this is another instance where the undemocratic nature of the Army is apparent.

Misogyny also occurs within the novel.
Like Mailer’s other works, The Naked and the Dead constantly portrays women as sexual objects who are unequal to men. Many men, especially Brown, fear that their wives are cheating on them while they fight in the war. This only causes them to have more hatred towards women. Brown tells Stanley that if he finds out his wife has cheated on him, he will beat her then throw her out.[4]:168 Later, in the Chorus “Women,” Polack insists that “there ain’t a fuggin woman is any good” and Brown agrees. Women are especially emphasized within Time Machine segments. Here the men’s romantic relationships and sexual experiences are heavily described. In many of the Time Machines, such as Martinez, women are portrayed as simply sexual
objects.