Character, Style, and Politics: Mailer and Sense of Self in "The Armies of the Night"

As expressed by Breslin “In The Armies of the Night autobiography works not towards self-examination but to collapse the distance between author and reader, to merge the two, so that the author can force the audience to 'see things as I do'.” (168). Clearly, the reluctance of the novel as to categorisation, in its role as novel, autobiography, and historical narrative, posits its impact upon the 1960s American political scene as unique and ubiquitous. Mailer the author’s careful analysis of Mailer the man, provides an interesting lens through which to view the schizophrenic division of American politics regarding protests against the Vietnam War, in addition to its significance as to Mailer’s participation in “the notoriety of the events it describes” (158). As a novel of an exclusive form, in its third-person satirical detailings of the 1968 March on the Pentagon, Mailer’s sense of self is explored in relation to his flaws of character, political identity, literary rivals, and his literary style, in terms of their tangibility and ironies, in relation to, and as influenced by, the politics of the New Left and the March on the Pentagon.

With regard to Mailer’s identity, or at least to the self he presents within The Armies of the Night (AON), as argued by Frederick Karl “the sense of self is so overwhelming that in the first and better half of this book we sense the Pentagon March would cease to exist if Mailer no longer perceived it.” (Wilson 73). Within the context of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, we are given an expose of Mailer’s political character in descriptions of himself as a “Leftist-Conservative” (Mailer 56), alongside references to existentialism, Marxism, and even nihilism, conveying his opposition to a singular political ideology as a method of categorisation, or as a purveyor of political progress. In addition to his unique position amongst the “New Left” (223) leading the protest against the Vietnam War, Mailer describes “the architecture of his personality” (17) as bearing “resemblance to some provincial cathedral” (17) depicting his egoism (as in the grandeur of his claims to be comparable to a “cathedral”), his pessimism (as in the use of “provincial” as limiter to this grandiosity”), in conjunction with his ironic and often comedic deprecation of himself within the novel. Mailer consciously exhibits a duality of righteousness throughout AON, in addition to a genetic pessimism - and simultaneous awareness of the detrimentality of this pessimism - that enables him in providing the reader with somewhat of a neutral, yet thoroughly judgemental, voice amongst the radical “liberal ideologues” (17) he so fundamentally detestes. Ironically, Mailer scorns the organisation of revolution and yet is involved in the March from the outset, exhibiting his status as a true radical conservative in 1960s America. Alongside the characteristic flair of pessimistic candour, Mailer additionally, and voluntarily, presents himself as egotistical, prideful, and “jealous” (45), traits most effectively demonstrated through his relations with other literary figures: “Mailer discovered he was jealous. Not of the talent, Lowell’s talent was very large, but then Mailer was a bulldog about the value of his own talent.” (45). Mailer’s crushing jealousy, disdain, and yet “respect” (43) for Lowell is of the most consequence, as through their interactions many of Mailer’s character flaws are demonstrated: 

You, Lowell, beloved poet of many, what do you know of the dirt and the dark deliveries of the necessary? What do you know of dignity hard-achieved, and dignity lost through innocence, and dignity lost by sacrifice for a cause one cannot name. What do you know about getting fat against your will, and turning into a clown of an arriviste baron when you would rather be an eagle or a count, or rarest of all, some natural aristocrat from these damned democratic states. (41) 

It seems Mailer too, recognises and simultaneously rejects the love Lowell evokes from his counterparts, seeking to undermine the justification of his “beloved[ness]” (41) through an assasination of his character. Depicting not only his jealousy, but also a prideful, hostile antagonism, Mailer, in a rather comedic and “operatic” (Breslin 158) nature, seeks to dehumanise Lowell, reducing him to a privileged “aristocrat” of an unfeeling nature, whereby in the politics of the New Left, “feeling” (Mailer 223) is of consequential value, especially in relation to the destructive force that is Republican rationality. 

The finer points of Mailer’s character, as expressed in his perception of himself in relation to other writers, are illustrated additionally through his writing style, most evidently his use of a third-person narrative, metaphor, and double negatives. Style is a form of attack for Mailer, exhibiting his confrontational nature and distinctly masculine identity, evidenced by Mailer’s use of metaphor in his illustration of style as referential of cutting; he alludes frequently to his “rhetorical sword” (60), his ability to use language to carve ideas into the sense (177), alongside assertions of his own style to be “cutting edge” (104) in its efficacy. His use of the double negative could be interpreted as pompous, yet simultaneously illuminating of his character, whereby the only praise he is able to express, either for himself or for others, are of a concessional nature, whereby he describes himself as  “not unbelievable” (10), and reasons that despite his “impressive sense of superiority” (44) Lowell “was not a splendid speaker” (44), conveying, consequently, a tone of authority the reader is expected to permit. (5) Mailer’s use of dull language in his description of Lowell as a “fine, good, and honourable man” (11), rings false when compared to the ludicrous and daring metaphors Mailer enacts in his discussion of other topics. When compared to quotes such as “the stupefactions of a near to overpowering headache” or Mailer's description of  “a plump young waitress with a strong perfume” as “a goddess of a bucket for a one-night stand” (98), his praise of Lowell seems both lacklustre and insincere. Seemingly then, Mailer is conceding, in his depiction of Lowell to be “the best…poet in America” (32). Yet, Mailer’s ambivalence and the irony of his tone express the opposite to be true, exposing the immensity of his jealousy, furthering the way in which Mailer’s style both consciously, and unwittingly, expresses Mailer’s own sense of himself. 

Consequently, it is Mailer’s self-acknowledged parallelities with President Lyndon Johnson that reveal the most about his character, his political identity, and his sense of self. Mailer is ostensibly an anti-hero, established in his ability to know and mock himself, furthered by his “confessional ego trip” (Merideth 437), culminating in his sudden comprehension of himself as Lyndon Johnson’s “little old alter ego…why it just came to me” (Mailer 71). Taking place throughout the course of Mailer’s address as MC, the parallelity begins ironically, through a parody of Johnson’s Southern drawl. The description of his toilet catastrophe and “forty-five second….piss” (63), aligns Mailer with Johnson’s “moral vulgarity” (Merideth 437) and “his idea of masculinity” (437), bolstered by allusions of himself to “General” (31) of the political New Left. Additionally, the notion of “obscenity” (38) is used to describe both Mailer and Johnson in their ability to make speeches, ratified by Lowell’s imagined response to Mailer’s own speech: “Every single bad thing I have ever heard about you is not exaggerated” (41). This assimilation reaches its conclusion in Mailer’s recognition of his decline into the sort of political jargon exhibited by politicians - “ah’m so phony, I’m as full of shit as Lyndon Johnson`” (63) - whereby Mailer’s own transgression into political propaganda details “the psychic degradation of American life” he wishes to convey within AON. Critically, it is in Mailer’s internal response to his alignment with Johnson that the most is revealed about his character and sense of self, evidenced by the following extract following Mailer’s introduction of Lowell:

But Mailer was depressed. He had betrayed himself again. The end of the introduction belonged in a burlesque house - he worked his own worst veins, like a man on the edge of bankruptcy trying to collect hopeless debts. He was fatally vulgar! Lowell passing him on the stage had recovered sufficiently to cast him a nullifying look. At this moment, they were obviously far from friends. (43-4)

Following Mailer’s descent into his “little old alter ego” (71), he undoubtedly experiences regret, claiming even to have “betrayed himself” (43), conveying the extent of his deep-rooted insecurity (“fatally vulgar”), and obsession with reputation. Ostensibly then, Mailer’s ironic expression of jealousy and egoism conceals, to an extent, the crippling insecurity he feels in his own sense of self, both personally and politically, elucidated by the alignment of his own egoism, masculinity, and pride to his manifested political nemesis, Lyndon Johnson.

However, as Berthoff asserts “In AON egotism becomes not an instrument of self-promotion…but a theme for discourse, a controlled element in the essential structure…it is the private matrix that will be gradually burned away as the full objective dimensions of the event are revealed” (Miller 389). In other words, Mailer, in his altered state of self-awareness, utilises irony in the portrayal of his character flaws to convey a redemptive character development across the course of the first book, culminating at the point of his arrest, later ratified by his release from jail with a newfound sense of purpose and modesty. Seemingly, Mailer begins the novel, and purposefully so, as a wholly unlikeable character, whereby his involvement in the March on the Pentagon becomes a transformative experience. Evidently, his identity remains the same; it is his sense of self in which the reader is able to witness this transformation, through the process of Mailer’s development, or “restoration” (Breslin 161), from “the soft corrupt edges to the hard core of his personality, tested in his direct encounter with the centre of America’s ‘schizophrenia’” (161). He begins Book One as “the slumbering Beast” (Mailer 43)  exemplified through his tumultuous enactment of “Master of Ceremonies” (31) in addition to his self-deprecating portrayal of his drunken toilet trip: “pissing on the floor was bad; very bad” (31). In the second chapter, Mailer takes a step towards a newfound sense of “modesty” (54) in relation to the exhibitionist and politically symbolic burning of draft cards. The third chapter details Mailers escape from “his own conflicted (and therefore inhibiting) ruminations as well as from the deadening chaos of the March, itself on the verge of disintegrating into a formless mass that stifles individual spontaneity and life” (Breslin 161). In chapter four Mailer is able to demonstrate his development from “Beast” (Mailer 43) to activist, through his “heroic” (133) and seemingly unprovoked “transgression of a police line” (137). This “restoration” (161) is completed in chapter five following Mailer’s confrontation with a Nazi - “He was in the land of the enemy now.” (151) - and emergence from prison with a “clean sense of himself” (238). This character arc thus provides the perfect extenuation for Mailer to then articulate his own perception of the schizophrenic nature of American politics in Book Two, whereby, having directly witnessed Mailer’s own redemptive transformation, the reader is able to respect Mailer’s authorial and political authority. As Mosser conveys “Mailer’s focus on his own perceptions and impressions does at times intensify the reader’s consciousness” (67), enabling a more intimate engagement with the politics of the New Left, as substantiated by the hamartia of the novel’s protagonist. Seemingly, in Mailer’s creation of a new genre, that which Mosser names “New Journalism”, readers are offered an informative, yet unique perspective of events, filtered through the author’s own sense of self, illuminating Mailer’s own apprehension of the inability of media to depict an accurate and “feeling” (232) portrayal of events. Thereby, Mailer’s character arc serves as a way in which Mailer is able to illustrate and articulate the nature of the divisions in American society in direct relation to his own sense of self, as a self-declared American “leftist conservative” (Mailer 56).

In summary, Mailer’s The Armies of the Night details the intimate relation between a man and his environment within the context of the October 1968 March on the Pentagon. Depictions of Mailer as egotistical, prideful, and jealous are correlated with allusions to insecurity, pessimism, and irony, explored in relation to his surrounding literary rivals, and political liberal sentiments. The style with which Mailer details the events elucidates the nature of his character to an even greater extent, in addition to his own fundamental sense of himself. In his proximity to Lyndon Johnson the wholly detestable parts of his character are exposed, only to be revolutionised through Mailer’s self-indulgent, yet self-aware enactment of a narrative character arc concluding in a feeling of moral and political purity. Evidently then, and, as expressed by Karl, Mailer’s sense of self in The Armies of the Night is “overwhelming” (73) in its tangibility, and wholly purposeful in its functioning as a vessel as to which one is able to gain historical access as to the schizophrenic nature of American politics. The question one is left with however, seems to be that of an unanswerable quality: does our engagement with Mailer’s sense of self within the novel give rise to a deeper understanding of the 1960s American political divide, or, does it simply muddy the water, and further dispel our ability to see history for what it actually was?

Works Cited

Breslin, James E. “Style in Norman Mailers The Armies of the Night.” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 8, 1978, p. 157., doi:10.2307/3506771. 

Mailer, Norman. The Armies of the Night. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968. McKinley, Maggie, and Norman Mailer. 

Understanding Norman Mailer. University of South Carolina Press, 2017. 

Merideth, Robert. “The 45-Second Piss: A Left Critique of Norman Mailer and ‘The Armies of the Night.’” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 1971.

Miller, Joshua. “No Success like Failure: Existential Politics in Norman Mailers ‘The Armies of the Night.’” Polity, vol. 22, no. 3, 1990, pp. 379–396., doi:10.2307/3234755. 

Wilson, Andrew. “Pentagon Pictures: The Civil Divide in Norman Mailers The Armies of the Night.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, no. 4, 2010, pp. 725–740., doi:10.1017/s0021875809991319.