James Jones was the quintessential war novelist. Stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, then deployed to fight at Guadalcanal, Jones was in a unique position to fictionalize about the World War II combat soldier's experience. His war novels, in fact, often took on the documentary aspects of nonfiction, in addition to providing compelling, realistic drama of soldiers at war. In his career-spanning trilogy—

From Here to Eternity

(1951),

The Thin Red Line

(1962), and

Whistle

(1978)—Jones traced the primary stages of a soldier's evolution, a process he described in his nonfiction account of the war,

WWII

(1975). First, according to Jones, comes the soldier's acceptance, through military training, of his own anonymity in the face of modern technological warfare. Then, with…

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Citation: Kent, Brian. "James Jones". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 January 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2403, accessed 19 March 2024.]

2403 James Jones 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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