The Naked and the Dead | Characters/Techniques
Mailer employs an omniscient narrator to get at the vast sweep of history in The Naked and the Dead. This narrator speaks for social reality and provides basic information and insight about characters who could not articulate their social significance in the novelist's imaginative terms. At the same time, Mailer allows the characters to speak for themselves — not only through dialogue but through the "Time Machine" sections, which are extended flashbacks into the backgrounds of the soldiers. In this way, the present is always informed by the past, and a character's behavior is...
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