Viewpoint Shifts In The Thin Red Line
I’m trying to make a go of it as a crime writer, but inspiration is where you find it. The Thin Red Line, by James Jones, is a war novel — and a masterful one — but has much to offer readers and writers of any genre. I read it decades ago, but one thing really stuck with me: how Jones managed a “roving camera” in his narrative, effortlessly wandering a scene, in-and-out of peoples’ heads, handling a half-dozen different points-of-view in a single chapter.
I’m gearing up to start work on a new novel, and I wish to manage rotating third-person points-of-view, so I returned to Jones’ novel to try to figure out how the hell he did it. As with my previous deconstructions, there’s only so much you can learn through forensic evaluation of an author’s work. About the best you can hope for is some small insight of how to do it your own way. The analysis is just going to give you a blueprint for a UFO beyond your comprehension. But like with the soldiers on Guadalcanal in Jones’ novel, nothing is going to get done unless you do it, so I cracked open the book and tried to chart the viewpoint changes in the novel’s first chapter, which introduces C-for-Charlie Company as they sweat it out on their transport, awaiting transport to the island where they will participate in one of the greatest ordeals of the war.
Jones’ camera starts on two transports "sneaked up from the south in the first graying flush of dawn," laden with troops bound for Guadalcanal. Jones talks of the company like a group mind, writing of their cynicism and paradoxical acceptance of death — it's coming, but not for me.
After describing a view of the shore, the camera frames two anonymous soldiers watching from the rail, grousing at each other while waiting their turn to board the LCI craft that approach from the shore.
But Jones' interest isn't here on the deck. He takes us down into the ship where our characters mill about, waiting their turn to climb to the deck and depart for the island. In this sweaty, crowded space he frames the first named characters, Private Mazzi and Private Tills, who speak aloud what everyone is thinking -- that their boat and everyone in it is a sitting duck for a Japanese air raid. Jones weaves this conversation with more omniscient appraisal from the C-for-Charlie group mind — how they resent having to wait, and kill time gambling.
Then there's another conversation, where PFC Doll, Corporal Queen, and Corporal Fife wonder what its like to be shot at. The camera stays with Doll as he sets off to steal a pistol, who pauses to talk with Mazzi and Tillis. Jones stays with Mazzi and Tillis after Doll leaves; the two privates grouse a bit, then Mazzi jerks his head toward the end of a companionway, where Captain Stein briefs his lieutenants.
After this interlude we go into Stein — his nickname, his path to the service — and for the first time we dive into a character's thoughts. Stein wonders at his men's morale, and if he can measure up to his father's service in the First World War.
We stay inside Stein's thoughts as Jones introduces Sergeant Welsh, who makes Stein uncomfortable. Stein thinks Welsh is crazy. Then Jones transfers his camera to Doll when he walks past Stein, still looking for a pistol. But now we're inside Doll's head, angry that Stein stopped him for some insecqueential conversation. We experience Doll's mounting anxiety, looking for a pistol, and how he will look like a fool to his pals if he doesn't score a gun. He ruminates about the fictions men construct about themselves, and how these are necessary to survive (introducing a major theme of the book).
Doll is spotted taking a gun, and reprimanded by a sergeant; we stay inside Doll as he returns the pistol, but backs the sergeant down. Jones describes Doll's emotional shift, building confidence after deflecting the Sergeant — now he's in the groove, everything goes his way as he easily scores another pistol and comes back to show off to Mazzi and Tills.
Again Jones sticks with Mazzi and Tills — they're like the center of gravity, his other players orbiting around the two. They argue, and Tills splits off to find a poker game. We are briefly in Tills' head while he wonders about joining a crooked game, before snapping back into Doll, who is confronted by Welch over his stolen pistol. Welch humiliates Doll, then we zoom into Welch's head, experiencing with him the petiness he inflicts on his men, and pushing into his past, where Welch formed his opinion of soldiery heroics from drinking with old veterans. To Welch, war is all about property — the getting of it, the keeping of it — but he's above it all. He reflects on Doll's uselessness, then settles on needling his clerk, Corporal Fife.
We shift to Fife's point-of-view, where he sits with the cooks, all of them anxious about being bombed. We are with him as he dreads Welch's approach. Fife reflects on his friendship with Private Bell, and recalls his conversation with Bell after uncovering a minor scandal about Bell previously being an officer, who washed out of the army before getting drafted back into the infantry.
When Welsh is about to pounce on Fife, Jones snaps to Mess Sergeant Storm, who knows what Welsh is about and knows what is going to happen, hoping the confrontation will distract his cooks from worrying about being bombed. When Welsh chews out Fife, we see it from Storm's point-of-view, but he's distracted, thinking about how he's set his personal affairs in order in the event of his death. He makes up his mind to come to Fife's defense but the alarm klaxxon signals it is time to mount to the deck.
The camera pulls back and again frames C-for-Charlie, following the company as a whole as they get their gear and gather on the deck, before going back into Doll as he goes over the side and into the LCI transport, reflecting that he doesn't want to see another ship unless its taking him home. We stay with Doll while approaching the shore, then jump to Fife, who digests news an air raid is coming with an insight that battle is just like a business.
Jones describes the men on the beach and the offloading of cargo through the collective eyes of C-for-Charlie, returning to Fife when the air raid begins, who sees the air battle through his mathematical/business lens, terrified and powerless. When bombs hit a landing craft it is C-for-Charlie that watches from the beach, and the company as a whole that witnesses the wounded brought to the beach, and watches them die, returning to Fife's point of view only long enough for him to observe the mathematics of being wounded and returned to service also fit his emerging view of war.
The company begins an exhausting march inland, the camera moving down the line, stopping on Welch long enough for him to renew his "property" mantra, and to wonder where he's going to find alcohol on the island. We overhear the cooks talking about the air raid, then halt on Captain Stein and his Lieutenant, struggling with their feelings at seeing men wounded and killed. Then we return to Doll one more time, to record his depression, before the company marches into the night toward their exhausted bivouwac.
In this first chapter, Jones introduces a dozen characters, and uses five different points-of-view — six if you count C-for-Charlie company as a whole. He goes broad, framing islands and war machines and air battles, and dives into memories and anxieties and remembered conversations. This swirling, in-and-out use of third person viewpoint, telescoping from omnicient to subjective to back again, is intoxicating, masterful, and effortless (for the reader, at least), making us a part of C-for-Charlie and establishing the company as a living thing. It has the characteristics of a waltz, and reminds me of the way Tolstoy could sweep us through a ballroom as his characters spiraled around each other. It is a work of genius, and like when I broke down Ross Macdonald and Elmore Leonard, I can trace the paths Jones took to do this, but good luck trying to blaze those trails on your own.
Characters (x = viewpoint character)
Mazzi
Tills
x Doll
Queen
x Fife
x Stein
x Welch
Bell
x Storm
I do think it critical that Jones establishes C-for-Charlie as an entity with its own point-of-view. It gives him a place to go back to, framing emotional reaction to events (the air raid, the wounded, the jungle) without zooming in on any particular character. This allows Jones to reserve specific character points-of-view for idosyncratic observations, like Fife seeing everything as a terrible equation, or Welch attributing war to pernicious property. But even the company's viewpoint is limited to the horizon -- they're helpless to intervene in the air/sea battle they observe from shore, and Jones describes the air battle, in particular, as an alien thing, a war of impossible insects. Ultimately even the chapter's most omniscient point-of-view keeps our boots on the ground, with the rest of C-for-Charlie, caught in the deadly embrace of Guadalcanal.
Lessons I take from this analysis:
Choreography: Understand the physical space and how the characters interact through it. Jones gets motion into dialogue by having characters roaming the ship. It’s a neat trick when he Doll off looking for a gun, then brings him back on stage when he’s snagged into a conversation other characters are having, only for us to exit that conversation by following Doll again.
Centers of Gravity: Jones returns to C-for-Charlie when he wants his most omniscient view, but he also establishes Mazzi and Tills as a lesser gravitational force. If things start to get diffuse or confusing, James grounds us with these centers of gravity.
Trust The Reader: This chapter and this book is a high-wire act, and maybe only someone like Jones can pull it off, but Jones is fearless in assuming his readers will stay with him. He doesn’t offset his viewpoint changes with narrative gimmicks or hashmark breaks. He just flows from one character to another, sometimes in the same paragraph, and isn’t afraid to lose you on the way.
This is a great book and now I have to read the rest of it … but for it’s own sake, and also to delay the existential plunge into writing a new novel!