VDM Zaweel, Y: The Myth of the Good War

Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut are three American writers who fought in the Second World War and wrote anti-war novels based on their experiences as soldiers during the war. Mailer, Heller and Vonnegut had to come up with new narrative forms and strategies in order to cope with the violence they experienced during World War II. In order to write their narratives, these three authors had to debunk earlier war myths, such as the myth of the good war, the hero myth and the myth of regeneration through violence as described by Richard Slotkin. Hence, Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead", Heller's "Catch-22" and Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" are anti-war novels that criticize earlier war myths and create new narratives and new forms of expression in their respective novels.