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So Prewitt got out of prison, and I'm now into the final section of the book (The Re-enlistment Blues), and I've gotta say, this isn't a story I can easily predict.
Maggio made it out, at least supposedly. Beaten all to hell, but he was able to survive the violence and the isolation, and fake going crazy without, well, actually going crazy. My only reservation is that Prewitt, and therefore the reader, heard of all this second hand, so it's possible he's not doing as well as all that, but every implication so far is that he really did do it, so I was wrong in that respect.
One guy did die, a side character named Bluesberry, beaten to death for helping another character get a hospital stay, having broken his arm for him as a favor.
Prewitt also decides he's going to find and kill one of the prison heads as soon as he gets out and gets a chance. I'm not sure why this caught me off guard, this is 100% in character for Prewitt, who's a moral man, but also a violent one.
He can't stand what he sees as wrong, can't hold himself back from acting on it, and struggles not to respond to that wrong in a way that escalates any given situation and brings himself harm.
Heck, the whole reason he left his former position and transferred to G company was because he was overlooked as head bugler in favor of a guy who just so happened to be sleeping with the man in charge of giving the promotion. While he opted to just up and leave rather than fight it, his response was still extreme, and was an early showcase of Prewitts inability to be in close proximity to wrongs or perceived wrongs without doing something major, either with himself or to others.
So when he saw man killed, he bought a knife, and he murdered the murderer.
One of the characters I haven't talked about much is Jack Malloy, one of the other prisoners in Prewitt's section of the stockade. Malloy was a former Wobbly (IWW party member, a workers-rights and socialist movement active in the early nineteen-hundreds, according to a quick look-through on the internet.) He is, singularly, a non-violent man, who believes in effecting change through the power of passive resistance in response to institutional force.
He also explicitly councils Prewitt against the course of action he's about to take, telling him that a murder will change nothing and fix nothing, that the Stockade will find a replacement for his target, and everything will be just as ugly and violent as it was before.
Prewitt hears him, but feels he has no other course of action, and goes through with it anyway.
Meanwhile, Karen Holmes and Milt Warden are kind of an unhealthy couple. They do love each other, but seem to struggle to connect in any way beyond the physical. So far, their plan is to marry after Milt is promoted to officer, which he really doesn't want, and Dana Holmes gets his transfer to work by the side of the evil general who thinks force and fear is the only proper way for for a modern government to rule.
This means a lot of the favoritism he'd been supporting immediately collapses, but I'm mad he seems to be getting what he wanted. What a bastard.
I'm still thinking about what I want to read after this. I've still got my collection of 20th century mysteries, with the Maltese Falcon down but plenty of others to go, and The Day of the Jackal, Which I know nothing about, but was told was good by a family member who did read it. It's apparently some kind of thriller. I've also got a short-story collection of classic sci-fi I need to finish, so I'm not hurting for options.
As for why everything I seem to have, book-wise, seems to be 50-100 years old, the answer is that I buy a lot of my literature in antique stores and library sales. I get great deals, From Here to Eternity was three bucks for the hardcover, but it also means brand new fiction isn't something I lay hands on as often as I'd like.
This is completely unrelated, but the Japanese LDP party apparently had a debate hosted by the owner of 4Chan? With a live chat and everything? What the heck.
Maggio made it out, at least supposedly. Beaten all to hell, but he was able to survive the violence and the isolation, and fake going crazy without, well, actually going crazy. My only reservation is that Prewitt, and therefore the reader, heard of all this second hand, so it's possible he's not doing as well as all that, but every implication so far is that he really did do it, so I was wrong in that respect.
One guy did die, a side character named Bluesberry, beaten to death for helping another character get a hospital stay, having broken his arm for him as a favor.
Prewitt also decides he's going to find and kill one of the prison heads as soon as he gets out and gets a chance. I'm not sure why this caught me off guard, this is 100% in character for Prewitt, who's a moral man, but also a violent one.
He can't stand what he sees as wrong, can't hold himself back from acting on it, and struggles not to respond to that wrong in a way that escalates any given situation and brings himself harm.
Heck, the whole reason he left his former position and transferred to G company was because he was overlooked as head bugler in favor of a guy who just so happened to be sleeping with the man in charge of giving the promotion. While he opted to just up and leave rather than fight it, his response was still extreme, and was an early showcase of Prewitts inability to be in close proximity to wrongs or perceived wrongs without doing something major, either with himself or to others.
So when he saw man killed, he bought a knife, and he murdered the murderer.
One of the characters I haven't talked about much is Jack Malloy, one of the other prisoners in Prewitt's section of the stockade. Malloy was a former Wobbly (IWW party member, a workers-rights and socialist movement active in the early nineteen-hundreds, according to a quick look-through on the internet.) He is, singularly, a non-violent man, who believes in effecting change through the power of passive resistance in response to institutional force.
He also explicitly councils Prewitt against the course of action he's about to take, telling him that a murder will change nothing and fix nothing, that the Stockade will find a replacement for his target, and everything will be just as ugly and violent as it was before.
Prewitt hears him, but feels he has no other course of action, and goes through with it anyway.
Meanwhile, Karen Holmes and Milt Warden are kind of an unhealthy couple. They do love each other, but seem to struggle to connect in any way beyond the physical. So far, their plan is to marry after Milt is promoted to officer, which he really doesn't want, and Dana Holmes gets his transfer to work by the side of the evil general who thinks force and fear is the only proper way for for a modern government to rule.
This means a lot of the favoritism he'd been supporting immediately collapses, but I'm mad he seems to be getting what he wanted. What a bastard.
I'm still thinking about what I want to read after this. I've still got my collection of 20th century mysteries, with the Maltese Falcon down but plenty of others to go, and The Day of the Jackal, Which I know nothing about, but was told was good by a family member who did read it. It's apparently some kind of thriller. I've also got a short-story collection of classic sci-fi I need to finish, so I'm not hurting for options.
As for why everything I seem to have, book-wise, seems to be 50-100 years old, the answer is that I buy a lot of my literature in antique stores and library sales. I get great deals, From Here to Eternity was three bucks for the hardcover, but it also means brand new fiction isn't something I lay hands on as often as I'd like.
This is completely unrelated, but the Japanese LDP party apparently had a debate hosted by the owner of 4Chan? With a live chat and everything? What the heck.
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