Herman Wouk – The Caine Mutiny
This Pulitzer-winning 1951 novel is starkly relevant today. When a commander is clearly unfit for the job, at what point is it ok to depose them, and on what grounds? John Locke wrestled with this question. So did the American revolutionaries he influenced—as did their opponents. This book, set in World War II, explores the same question onboard the Caine, a fictional World War II U.S. navy minesweeping ship. The main character, who is something of a privileged twit though with redeeming qualities, enlists in the Navy and finds himself aboard an old bucket of a ship near the end of its lifecycle. The Caine‘s captain is as mediocre as his ship, and is eventually transferred elsewhere.
His replacement, with the Melville-esque name Captain Queeg, quickly establishes his popularity with the crew with his attention to details the previous captain had neglected, and boosts morale. But after the initial wave of good feeling, the mood quickly shifts. He is indecisive and wavering during several critical points of action, and nearly loses the ship and its crew more than once. He isolates himself in his cabin, avoiding both crew and duty. When they enter his cabin to bring him news, he is nearly always asleep, undressed, or unshaven. Captain Queeg resorts to harsh, arbitrary discipline, such as cutting the crew off from all non-subsistence water rations for 48 hours while the non-air-conditioned ship is sailing near the equator. The crew had earlier exceeded their water usage quotas by ten percent. This and other nonsensical measures, along with another panic attack during action induce the grumbling, frightened crew to relieve him of command.
The book is interesting because the case is not so cut-and-dry. During the court-martial trial that follows the mutiny, Queeg never exceeded his bounds of authority under regulations, and gives decent justifications. Despite showing some signs of mental illness, doctors refuse to formally diagnose him with anything that would render him unfit for command. Queeg is also able to give plausible justifications for his command decisions. Meanwhile, the crew clearly had an animus against him. There is clear evidence they conspired against Queeg in a premeditated mutiny, which the crew members admit to. After the trial, both of the mutinying crew members find themselves captaining the Caine at various points before its decommissioning. They find their performance in that difficult job to be not much better than Queeg’s.
The Caine Mutiny presents more questions than answers, on purpose. That is what makes it both an excellent novel and a good lesson for today’s predicament with President Trump. There are clear signs that his temperament is not suitable for the presidency, yet it’s not so cut-and-dry in a legal case. He has little respect for the rule of law, has an arbitrary, uncertain approach to policy, is an alienating diplomatic presence, and deliberately polarizes the electorate. His age and mental state are also tempting to question. But at the same time, does he meet the threshold for 25th Amendment action, or for impeachment? It’s not black-and-white, and both sides have good arguments. Moreover, Trump’s potential replacements from either party don’t necessarily guarantee improvement.
The weighty matter of mutiny is both leavened and paralleled in the main character’s romantic subplot. He comes from an upper-middle class WASP-ish upbringing. In his first post-Princeton job, as a nightclub pianist, he meets a young singer of poorer Italian-Catholic background. They genuinely love each other, but the main character’s reticence to marry outside of his class and religion, along with some mommy issues, complicate things. They are a cute couple together and the reader naturally wants to root for them, but both external circumstances and mutual idiocy keep them apart—though far more his than hers. At the end of the book, as with the question of mutiny, their relationship is unresolved, but it seems hopeful that things will work out.
Inertia Wins! 