The Naked and the Dead & I, The Jury

Sam Croft in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and Mike Hammer in Mickey Spillane's I, The Jury are both macho characters, but there are great differences between the two. Croft is a sadistic man without a heart while Hammer is simply a man who can be tough when he needs to be, but can also be gentle and loving. This study will show that Mailer has created an evil and violent fascist in Croft, while Spillane has created in Hammer a hard-nosed private detective with a heart. Croft is out to do damage wherever he can, while Hammer is out to serve justice, especially in terms of avenging his cruelly murdered friend Jack Williams. Hammer is shown to care about other people

---including the person who murdered his friend, while Croft cares about nothing and nobody but himself.

Mickey Spillane leaves no doubt in the reader's head that his private eye Mike Hammer is capable of great violence. Hammer lets us know this in his own words:

There are ten thousand mugs that hate me and you know it. They hate me because if they mess with me I shoot their damn heads off. I've done it and I'll do it again (Spillane 5).

However, Hammer is saying these words in the heat of his anger over the murder of his friend. He vows to kill the murderer, but he does so in the context of his love for his friend. It is up to the reader to decide if Hammer is a truly violent man at heart, as Croft certainly is, but there is no doubt that in Hammer we find other qualities which are absent in Croft. F

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) I HATE EVERYTHING WHICH IS NOT IN MYSELF (Mailer 164). Whereas Hammer commits violence only against criminals and/or those who want to do harm to him or those he loves, Croft is a sadist who simply enjoys committing violence for its own sake, even against the completely innocent. All that matters to him when he feels his deep rage and hatred for everyone and everything is to express that rage and hatred in an act of violence. The first time Croft kills a man he is a National Guardsmen at an oil strike. The striking workers call the Guardsmen names. Croft is enraged. The Guardsmen are told to fire over the heads of the strikers to stop them from throwing rocks: Croft sights down his barrel. He has pointed his gun at the chest of the nearest man, and he feels a curious temptation. I'll just squeeze the trigger a little bit. BAA-WOWWW! The shot is lost in the volley, but the striker drops. Croft feels a hollow excitement. . . . He watches the mob retreating in a panic. Bunch o' dogs, he tells himself. His heart is beating, and his hands feel very dry (Mailer 161). Croft is a man who only finds pleasure in inflicting pain, in killing, and in leading others to inflict pain and kill. The army in wartime is the perfect situation

Category: Literature - T