98 - Final Harbor Question 5

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Most submarine-based books focus on the officers - like our previous submarine book - but this one gives much more spotlight time to the enlisted men than most. What did you think of the characters and their development?

Comments

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    Given my mistake over timing, I can't remember much about the enlisted characters. That probably says all you need about how memorable they were.

    The enlisted characters weren't protagonists in the story. I think they were to provide a different viewpoint, and to make human the effects of some of the decisions made by the officer characters. I don't recall any of them having significant development, but I'll be happy to be corrected!

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    One other thing about characters and tropes. When I were a lad, I read war comics like "Commando" and "Warlord", full of butch soldiers who spoke in a way that fitted into speech bubbles: Short phrases! With exclamation marks, Ginger!

    These characters spoke the same! You can see the speech bubbles! It's not naturalistic. But it's punchy!

    The other element was the anti-semitism, or lack of. Many characters expressed unease about having a Jew in the crew, but none of them acted in any anti-semitic way towards Cohen. I'm not entirely sure what point the author was trying to make, but he was definitely trying to say something.

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    As for the anti-semitism or lack thereof, it has never been a hard thing in the US like in Europe. I think the crew's attitude is consistent with that of my father's friends who were of that generation. More of a source of jokes because of their different culture and a lack of personal contact.

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    I have to confess that I don't really know which of them were officers and which enlisted! My acquaintance with naval ranks either side of the Atlantic just isn't that good. But something that I have come across several times (particularly on this side of the Atlantic) is the contrast between the naval career officers, and those who had joined up from other professional sources (eg Merchant Navy primarily, but also fields such as geology and whatnot). Didn't this come up on board HMS Trebuchet as well? In any case I've come across that in enough books that I am sure there was at best tension and at once antagonism between those two groups.

    Again, HMS Ulysses includes a fair share of lower ranks as focused characters along with more senior ones. And CS Forester's The Ship (set on a Malta convoy in the Med during WW2, first published 1943) also does, so maybe it's a thing that authors used to do?

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    Yes - there was the same distrust of the career navy for the wartime volunteers on the Trebuchet. That is a universal and eternal thing!

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    I wondered if Homewood was trying to draw a parallel between being a reserve and being a Jew - there was more mistrust of the reserve, more surprise at the Jew?

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    @Apocryphal said:
    I wondered if Homewood was trying to draw a parallel between being a reserve and being a Jew - there was more mistrust of the reserve, more surprise at the Jew?

    Huh! That very well may be!

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    I liked getting to know the crew, partly because it added depth and enjoyment and partly because it allowed us to see different parts of/jobs in the boat.

    The racism and sexism was probably realistic for the time. I thought it was a little thinly portrayed. People were either racist or they weren't, it seems. Not much of that realistic unintentional or blind racism was seen. And, I have to say, the audiobook narrator "enjoyed" reading these passages a little too much. He did the book a disservice, perhaps, by making me think the author was reveling in living out these days when women were women and officers were WASPs.

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    There was only one black person on the boat - the cook - who was only noted for being black in passing, when he was shot. Perhaps not enough opportunity for racism? The vast majority of cooks/stewards in the navy were black or Filippino in WWII. The US Navy was in no way, shape, or form integrated, unlike in the days of sail.

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    Well, I categorized the Jewish stuff as racist. But I suppose you could chalk all that up to religion. Maybe. They didn't seem to ask him about his religion, just assumed it based on his name, and apologized for it after saying awkward things. :)

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