The Long March is one of William Styron’s masterpieces. It is a perfect indictment of the psychological impact of the military on people. Mannix, a Marine captain, sets himself in a training exercise against his superior officer, Colonel Templeton. Mannix believes that Templeton’s motives are punitive and idiotic. He also believes that Templeton is a hypocrite who will not subject himself to the hardships of his men in the training exercise – a long, hot, ridiculously long march.Mannix cannot let himself admit that he has been beaten. “The old atavism that clutched them, the voice that commanded, once again, you will. How stupid to think they had ever made their own philosophy; it was as puny as a house of straw, and at this moment—by the noise in their brains of those words, you will—it was being blasted to the winds like dust. They were as helpless as children. Another war, and years beyond reckoning, had violated their minds irrevocably. For six years they had slept a cataleptic sleep, dreaming blissfully of peace, awakened in horror to find that, after all, they were only marines, responding anew to the old commands. They were marines.” The question is why? This novel is a darkly comic tragedy. One can see easily that this scenario has repeated itself many times over. That Templeton turns out to be an honorable representation of a Colonel and Mannix is incorrect only makes it that much more tragic. Mannix no longer needed the military in his life, but he still was not capable of leaving it behind. This is a great book.
