Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen

First published: 1946

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Satire

Time of plot: Last months of World War II

Locale: Southwest Pacific

Principal characters

• Douglas Roberts, first lieutenant on the USS Reluctant
• Captain Morton, the skipper of the Reluctant
• Ensign Keith,
• Bookser, a seaman
• Frank Thompson, a radioman

The Story:

Douglas Roberts, first lieutenant on the Reluctant, a U.S. Navy supply ship in the Pacific, is the guiding spirit of the crew’s undeclared war against the skipper, Captain Morton, an officious, childish, and unreasonable officer. The Reluctant is noncombatant, plying among islands left in the backwash of the war. None of its complement has seen action, and none wants action except Roberts, who has applied without success for transfer to a ship on the line.

In the continuously smoldering warfare between the captain and the other officers and the men of the ship, Roberts scores a direct hit on the captain’s fundament with a wad of lead-foil shot from a rubber band while Captain Morton is watching motion pictures on board. Ensign Pulver, who spends most of his time devising ways of making the skipper’s life unbearable, manufactures a giant firecracker to be thrown into the captain’s cabin at night. The premature and violent explosion of the firecracker puts the entire Reluctant on a momentary battle footing. Ensign Pulver is burned badly.

Ensign Keith comes to the Reluctant by way of middle-class Boston, Bowdoin College, and accelerated wartime naval officer training. He is piped aboard in the blazing sunshine of Tedium Bay, hot in his blue serge uniform but self-assured because Navy regulations prescribe blues when reporting for duty. Despite the discomfort of a perspiration-soaked shirt and a wilted collar, Ensign Keith immediately shows the crew that they will have to follow naval regulations if he has his way aboard ship. One night, however, while he is on watch, he comes upon a drinking and gambling party presided over by Chief Dowdy. Keith is hoodwinked by the men into trying some of their drink. Not much later, under the influence of Chief Dowdy’s “pineapple juice,” Keith becomes roaring drunk, all regulations and service barriers forgotten. His initiation completed, Ensign Keith never again refers to rules and regulations.

At a forward area island base, where the Reluctant has docked to unload cargo, the crew quickly learns that the military hospital is staffed by real nurses. Every available binocular, telescope, and rangefinder on board is soon trained on the nurses’ quarters. Interest rises to a fever pitch when it is discovered that a bathroom window shade in the quarters is never lowered. Officers and crew soon come to know the nurses by their physical characteristics, if not by formal introduction. One day, a nurse comes aboard and overhears two seamen making a wager concerning her physical characteristics. That same day, the bathroom shade is lowered, never to be raised again.

For days in advance, the ship’s complement plan their shore leave in Elysium, a civilized port of call. Seaman Bookser, the spiritual type, is the butt of many jokes concerning his liberty plans. At Elysium, half the men are given shore leave. From sundown until the following dawn, they are brought back by jeep and truck. They had fought with army personnel, insulted local citizens, stolen government property, wrecked bars and saloons, and damaged the house of the French consul. Further shore leave is canceled. Bookser, the spiritual seaman, is driven up to the dock in a large car on the day of departure. Beside him is a beautiful young woman whom he kisses long and passionately before leaving her. Astonished at Bookser and proud of him at the same time, the crew makes him the hero of the stop at Elysium.

Roberts listens to V-E Day reports on the ship’s radio. The apathy of his fellow officers toward events happening in Europe leads him to pitch the captain’s cherished potted palm overboard late that night. At the same time, Roberts stirs up the noise-hating captain by slamming a lead stanchion against a stateroom bulkhead. Roberts is not caught, nor does he give himself up during the captain’s mad search for the culprit. The crew manufactures a medal and presents it to Roberts for valor above and beyond the call of duty—a seaman had seen Roberts in action on V-E night.

Frank Thompson, a radioman and the ship’s expert at the board game Monopoly, is informed by wire that his baby, whom he has never seen, has died in California. Thompson, anxious to go to the funeral and to be with his wife, applies for permission to fly to home. The captain refuses. Roberts advises him to go to a nearby island to see the chaplain and the flag secretary. Thompson goes, but he is told that no emergency leave could be permitted without his captain’s approval. He then walks alone in a deserted section of the island for several hours before he returns to the Reluctant and takes his usual place at the head of the Monopoly table.

Not long after V-E Day, Roberts receives orders to report back to the United States for reassignment. He spends the night before he leaves the Reluctant with his special friends among officers and crew, drinking punch made of crew-concocted raisin brew and grain alcohol from dispensary supplies. The effect of Roberts’s leaving is immediate. No longer is there a born leader aboard. All functions and activities in the ship’s routine go wrong; no longer is there any one man upon whom the officers could depend to maintain their balance in the tedium of a dull tropic supply run. No longer do the enlisted men have an officer upon whom they could depend as a link between them and the ship’s authorities.

Roberts is assigned to duty aboard a destroyer that is part of a task force bombarding the Japanese home islands. Not long before V-J Day, Ensign Pulver receives a letter from a friend aboard the same ship. The letter states that a Japanese kamikaze plane had broken through antiaircraft defenses and crashed into the bridge of the destroyer. Among those killed in the explosion was Roberts, who had been in the officers’ mess drinking coffee with another officer. Mr. Roberts had seen action at last.

Bibliography

Beidler, Philip D. “Mr. Roberts and American Remembering: Or, Why Major Major Major Major Looks Like Henry Fonda.” Journal of American Studies 30, no. 1 (1996): 47-64. An analysis of Heggen’s Mister Roberts, comparing it with Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Provides an overview of Heggen’s career and discusses the novel’s adaptation for the stage and screen.

Cohn, Victor. “Mister Heggen.” Saturday Review of Literature 32 (June 11, 1949). A brief but interesting consideration of Heggen and his work. This article was published not long after Heggen’s suicide in May of the same year.

Feeney, Mark. “Patton/Mister Roberts.” In Nixon at the Movies: A Book About Belief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Although this chapter primarily deals with the film adaptation of Mister Roberts, its comments also pertain to the novel. Feeney describes how the film’s (and the novel’s) depiction of the dullness of military life resonates with veterans, leading to the success of the novel and its various adaptations.

Leggett, John. Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974. Rev. ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000. Leggett’s book is primarily a biographical study of Heggen and novelist Ross Lockridge, who both killed themselves, rather than a critical work on Mister Roberts. It is indispensable to understanding Heggen’s state of mind when he wrote the novel. The revised edition has a new afterword by Leggett.