The Fragmented Platoon: Reading Social Identity Theory in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead

The Fragmented Platoon: Reading Social Identity Theory in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead
Dilruba Khatun

Abstract

Norman Mailer’s novel The Naked and the Dead, published in 1948, is regarded as one of the seminal World War II fictions and celebrated for its raw and unfiltered portrayal of soldiers’ lives in combat. Jean Radford opines that the novel is not a simple ‘realistic documentary’ of war, but rather a symbolic ‘conflict between the beast and the seer in man.’ However, this article proposes reading the conflict among men (soldiers) through a social-psychological approach called Social Identity Theory (SIT), developed by Henry Tajfel and John Turner (1970s). The Article aims to investigate the nuances of identity formation, reformation, and negotiation among soldiers on the battlefield, where they struggle to belong and believe. SIT understands social identity as “that of part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership’’ (Tajfel), by analysing the cognition and behaviour of individuals through the ‘in-group’ and ‘outgroup’ dichotomy. Applying this critical framework to Mailer’s novel, this article explores how a military platoon functions amid the anguish of survival and how it becomes a crucible for the formation, transition, and dissolution of personal, political, and social identities. The article proposes to analyse three core ideas: the self and social categorization of the soldiers, the social Identity and comparison with ‘in-group’ favouritism and ‘outgroup’ discrimination in the platoon, and the ultimate collapse of all their superficial identities under the acute existential crisis, revealing the fragility of social identity itself. By reading The Naked and the Dead through the lens of SIT, this article argues that this novel is not merely a meditation on power, politics, and masculinity but also an inquiry into the social psychology of individual and collective identities in the show of war.