From Here to Eternity

Novel by James Jones, 1951 Film directed by Fred Zinneman, 1953

From Here to Eternity (1951) was the first and by far the best-known novel of a trilogy written by James Jones about the U.S. Army in the World War II era. It is considered by many to be one of the best novels to come out of the experience of that war.

Born in 1921, Jones turned to writing after an unhappy childhood and a checkered career in World War II, during which he was twice decorated for bravery but also twice demoted to buck private. From Here to Eternity, Jones's first novel, transformed him from an unknown into an instant literary celebrity before age 30. Jones spent the rest of his life writing and assisting struggling young authors. He died in 1977 much beloved and admired by his peers.

Jones's World War II trilogy is built around three characters: a sensitive and contemplative private, an accomplished and worldly wise company top sergeant, and a jaded but morally decent company head cook. Jones changed the [Page 293]names and fates of his three archetypes in the later two works (The Thin Red Line [1958] and Whistle [completed after his death by lifelong friend Willie Morris in 1978]), but the theme remains the same: the struggle of the anonymous and the underprivileged against the impersonal inhumanity of modern society.

The private, named Robert E. Lee Prewitt in From Here to Eternity, is a faithful and hardworking soldier who has found his only home in the Army after a difficult adolescence during the Great Depression. When faced with the prospect of compromising with the favoritism that would allow him to pursue his great passion, playing the bugle, Prewitt gladly opts instead to return to straight duty as an infantryman. Matters worsen when his company commander, Captain “Dynamite” Holmes, wants Prewitt to join the company boxing team. Prewitt is a quick and powerful fighter who has given up the sport after injuring a friend in a freak accident while sparring, and he resists the pressure when Holmes encourages the company NCOs to administer “the treatment,” a series of unfair punishments for Prewitt's imagined failures in his duties. With some help from fellow soldier Angelo Maggio, a thoroughly disgruntled draftee from Brooklyn, and Alma, a prostitute trying to earn her way to financial and emotional security, Prewitt endures, winning the grudging admiration of Milton Anthony Warden, the top sergeant, who becomes Prewitt's implicit benefactor. However, matters again worsen, and Prewitt eventually is sent, on falsified charges, to the base stockade, where he suffers under the Army's officially sponsored sadism. There he meets Jack Malloy, a fellow inmate but an iconic character through whose teachings the reader sees the parallels between the book's central characters and Jones's view of the history of American socialism: battered by the powers that be but philosophically triumphant in the end.

Warden experiences yet another form of oppression as the exploited underling of the career-climbing Captain Holmes. In an attempt to strike back at his commanding officer, Warden risks 20 years in a federal prison to conduct a torrid love affair with Holmes's wife. But he unexpectedly discovers in her a kindred spirit and the only true love of his life, and the star-crossed pair must endure the domination of the same man who torments Prewitt. Mahlon Stark, the cook, provides a balance between Prewitt and Warden by befriending both and helping each find the strength to defy their commander's abuse of the company to further his own career. Ultimately, Prewitt triumphs over his oppressors by maintaining his integrity in the face of the great suffering, and ultimately death, meted out to him by his beloved Army. Warden achieves his own victory by preserving his humanity and the company despite poor leadership and then war after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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