Island of the Damned

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Island of the Damned (also The Dancing Elephant ; English original title The Thin Red Line ) is a novel by the American author James Jones , which describes the battle of the Solomon Islands Guadalcanal . James Jones, who himself had served as a soldier in the Battle of Guadalcanal , wrote the novel in 1962. Island of the Damned has greater similarities with the other two war novels by James Jones ( Damned for all eternity , original title: From Here to Eternity , and Heimkehr the damned , original title: Whistle ) and forms with them a trilogy on the Pacific War .

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Although the entire story of the novel takes place on Guadalcanal, topographical conditions and the naming of hills, ranges of hills etc. are fictitious according to the notes in the foreword (for example "The Dancing Elephant", "Hill 209").

The war is portrayed from the perspective of several main characters of the C-for-Charlie company of a US infantry battalion, which is looking forward to its first deployment in the Pacific theater of war in November 1942. Constantly fearful of air attacks, the men land on Guadalcanal and initially fight with long forced marches, malaria and the unfamiliar tropical climate on the island.

The ambitious plans of the army command envisage using the C-for-Charlie company as a spearhead for an attack on the hill complex "The Dancing Elephant" (German "The dancing elephant"). After an assault, the half-thirsty GIs succeed in wresting the complex from the also severely weakened Japanese defenders , with heavy losses, whereby descriptions of war crimes on the part of the Japanese and Americans also occupy a large space in the novel.

After this success, further victims demand the fight against Japanese reinforcements in the dense jungle of the island and the storming of a village before the now heavily decimated troops are mostly evacuated from the island.

filming

The novel was made into a film twice, in 1964 and in 1998 . The successful adaptation from 1998 shows a number of differences from the original book (the names of the protagonists, with the exception of the Jewish captain James Stein as the leader of the company, are, however, taken from the book almost unchanged).

If dialogues and speeches are reproduced almost word for word in the film (e.g. the speech by Capt. Bosche at the end of the book), the philosophical undertone of the film is missing in the novel. Pvt. Witt , in the book a quarrelsome and alcoholic daredevil who is deported as a troublemaker into an insignificant military special formation (“Cannon Company”), is a rather spiritual loner as the protagonist of the film. The real main character of the novel, Cpl. Fife is only a marginal character in the film. War crimes and homosexual activities by some soldiers - described broadly in the book - are not shown in the film.

expenditure

English editions

  • James Jones: The Thin Red Line. Scribner, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1962, ISBN 0-385-32408-1 (hardcover).
  • James Jones: The Thin Red Line. Delta Fiction, New York 1998, ISBN 0-385-32408-1 (paperback).

German editions

  • James Jones (translation by Günther Danehl): The dancing elephant. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1963.
  • James Jones (translation by Günther Danehl): Island of the Damned. Fischer (Tb.), Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14188-5 (paperback).

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