What did Keith have against Captain DeVriess who wasn't really a bad guy, a bit unconventional maybe, but pretty fair to his officers and men and nowhere near as obsessed with trivialities as Captain Queeg.
shareI think they resented each other a little.....
Keith was fresh out of school and raring to go - he was going to turn the Navy on it;s ear.
Devries had seen it all before and set out to deflate Keith's ballon immediately.
Devries basically told him - look kid, this is the bioler room of the war effort. If you want to set the world on fire, do it when I'm retired, not now.
That was the source of resentment on both parts i think.
Keith was initially enthusiastic when Queeg arrived to take command of the Caine but he soon changed his mind when Queeg's obsession with perfection and blowing trivial matters out of all propotion resulted in him continually picking on Keith.
shareDeVriess' problem with Keith was that he was -when he came aboard- immature and didn't take his duties as seriously as he should have. This is shown more in the book.
Keith's dislike of DeVriess stemmed from the fact that the captain was on him to improve his performance. Again, this is shown more in the book. Willie came aboard and was disgusted by the condition of the ship. He found it messy, with the crew acting slack. In the meantime, DeVriess was antagonistic towards him as Willie seemed to consider the ship beneath him and didn't appreciate the fact that the Caine had been in the forward area (i.e. the combat zone) pretty much since the war had begun.
In the book, Willie's dislike of DeVriess is called a boyish pique; like a student who dislike a teacher that wants him to improve his performance. His opinion of DeVriess does change slightly after a few days at sea on minesweeping practice. He sees that the crew -despite their slovenly appearance- perform their duties well and DeVriess is a good ship handler. As well, he visits their sister-ship, the U.S.S. Moulton, in the nest back at Pearl Harbor. He finds that the ship is immaculately neat, but while at sea the Moulton's crew lost a paravane resulting in the whole squadron having to spend an extra night at sea. As well, the captain of the Moulton, "Iron Duke" Sammis is a true martinet who has his entire wardroom shaking with fear. On crossing back to the Caine, Willie feels that his whole perception of the Caine has been shaken. His ship looks like a rundown garbage-scow, but outperformed all the other ships when at sea on training maneuvers. As well, he always thought DeVriess was a tyrant but compared to Sammis he's lazily benign.
Later, after Queeg takes over, and Willie sees just what a bad captain is, he re-evaluates his opinion of DeVriess. On leave with May, he tells her about Queeg. She's horried and asks if all the regular officers are like that. He says that the captain before Queeg (i.e. DeVriess) was a great guy and highly capable. Once the words are out of his mouth, he smiles as he realizes his change of heart about Captain DeVriess. After experiencing Queeg, he could see that DeVriess was a good captain who only wanted a green ensign to shape up.
On DeVriess' part, he never had any real dislike of Keith. In fact, he always thought that Willie had a vast amount of potential. Soon before the typhoon, Maryk sees how Willie is capably working on the navigation charts he thinks back to Captain DeVriess' opinion of Willie. DeVriess said that once Willie grew up a little and got some experience, he'd be an outstanding officer. At Okinawa, when Willie is the Executive Officer, Keefer (who's now captain) recalls the time Willie misplaced the dispatch. It was he -Keefer- who thought Willie was hopeless. It was Captain DeVriess who said that Willie would eventually grow into a fine officer.
Excellent; just two points I'd like to add. First, I think you might be understating the importance of the ship's slovenly appearance just a little. It wasn't just that this disgusted Keith; it went further. Keith (at least in the book) took one look at the ship and assumed that a vessel with such an appearance had to be commanded by someone who wasn't fit to be captain ... before even meeting deVriess. From the first moment he got a good look at the Caine, Keith decided that deVriess wasn't fit to be a captain.
Second, although this was never explicitly stated in the book, I think it's reasonable to assume that deVriess, having been in the Navy for quite a while, had seen Keith's "type" before; fresh out of school ... still believing that holding ones hand at the correct angle while saluting and having a perfectly pressed uniform were as important as getting the job done ... while not knowing the difference between a paravane and a breakfast pastry. Upon meeting Keith, he may well have thought, "here we go again, gotta knock some sense into a new ensign."
It wasn't just how messy the ship was. It was that everyone on the ship seemed to be completely non-regulation. All the sailors Willie has seen thus far were all wearing filthy rags of dungarees and wearing their hair in strange cuts. In the wardroom, the officers seemed to be little better.
As for DeVriess, he knew that Willie had spent the last four months stationed at Pearl, doing decoding duty eight hours a day and enjoying the Honolulu night life when not on duty. While that was going on, the Caine was engaged in action in the Soloman Islands. DeVriess had been in the Navy a while, as he was a regular officer and an Annapolis graduate, however I think his attitude towards Willie was more to do with how he regarded his duties rather than trivial matters such as resenting Willie's attitude about neatness. I'm sure DeVriess realized the state of the ship and made allowances for newcomers saw it. He himself said that old ships like the Caine were really too far gone for spit and polish to apply. The decks were rusted from decades of salt water and the powerplant was antiquated. He likely realized the reaction new officers (fresh out of either the Academy or, more likely, midshipman school) would have after being indoctrinated with regulations and probably didn't hold newcomers reactions against them. I got the impression DeVriess leaned more heavily on the new officers to see how they would react and he could guage their character. He didn't seem to take much notice of Harding -who arrived on the ship at the same time as Willie. Perhaps that was because he saw that Harding was a lot older than most new officers (he was well into his 30's and had three children), thus he figured Harding was mature enough to handle things and his treatment wasn't necessary.
On Willie's part, his performance wasn't that great in his first days. Out at sea, he uses the blinker light to send a greeting to a friend from midshipman school who was on the sister DMS Moulton. DeVriess angrily stops him, and then -controlling his temper- informs him that any message at sea is considered official and only he -the captain- has authority to send one. The captain then chews out the petty officer in charge of the light, saying that he -the petty officer- knew the communications procedures even if the new officer didn't and said he's on report if it happens again. Willie thinks DeVriess is a Prussian sadist for chewing out an enlisted man to make Willie feel worse (or, that's how he sees it).
Overall, I think Willie's attitude to DeVriess served to make him see Queeg in a good light when he first came aboard. He was convinced the Bureau of Personnel had sent "a prince" to restore the ship after DeVriess' disastrous tenure. It's only when Queeg takes the ship out to sea for the first time that Willie begins to realize Queeg is less than competent. And, as Queeg starts to impose truly cruel punishments on the crew for minor infractions (as opposed to DeVriess' method of just chewing someone out then letting it rest), he sees that DeVriess was a pretty good captain after all.
Excellent analysis. I would just add that Keith was typical of a kid in his first job with no experience. I have seen so many first time employees who are hyper critical of their managers and the company. I was that way myself. After some real world experience and seasoning, that first manager usually looks like a pretty good guy. Maybe the best manager you ever had.
share"Biloer" room?
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.
He was a fresh young shavetail with flies in his eyes.
shareUnder DeVriess Keith felt like he was overly criticized about his mistake and also that he resented his Ivy-League background. It was tough but it put him on the road to becoming a better officer. You expect a Captain to be tough on serious mistakes, but Queeg gave everybody hell for any PERCEIVED infraction.
shareWhat's more, Queeg was incompetent when it came to important matters of ship handling. If Queeg had been a martinet who imposed draconian punishment for every perceived error, but been a good ship handler and not done things like dropping the dye marker the first time in combat, the officers and crew would've learned to live with his command style until he was relieved.
As well, Willie's mistake -the loss of a dispatch before the Captain saw it- could have had ENORMOUS repercussions.
Agreed. Willie was DAMN lucky not to have been more severly punished. And, later in the book, he realizes that and is suprised to find himself respecting DeVries as an excellent ship handler, a good seaman, and an all around good guy. A bit sloppy, true, but he knew how to get the important jobs done.
shareWillie was very lucky that the dispatch was not orders to a combat assignment AND that DeVriess rather lenient.
It's when he's at Yosemite with May that Willie realizes his change of heart. He describes Queeg to her and she's horrified. She asks if the rest of the Navy (i.e. the Annapolis-educated Regular Navy) is like that. Willie says not at all; the previous Captain was "a grand guy and damned capable too". Willie then smiles to himself as he recognizes the change of heart he's had about DeVriess.
Can you imagine the consequences if the missing dispatch had happened with Queeg in command!!!!!!
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In the novel, Kiefer says he's "interested in essences, not accidents." This is a reference to Plato's distinction between the internal qualities of a thing and its outward appearance. This is the basis for Willie Keith's initial resentment of the first captain and his initial admiration for Queeg.
Captain De Vreiss was a competent ship handler, ran a happy ship, and could be relied on to get the job done. Those are the "essential qualities" of a ship's captain. The other consequences of his command -- the sloppiness, the laxness -- are all "accidents," just outward appearances that have little to do with the job itself. In the Armed Forces, smartness of appearance and military demeanor are often referred to by the men as "chicken****."
Captain De Vreiss was like an ugly saint. A man of quality whose outward appearance is offensive to some.
Keith doesn't understand the difference at first. He judges by appearances and never learns to appreciate De Vriess's seamanship.
Keith makes the same mistake when judging Queeg. Queeg is going to clean up the ship and make it look smart, but he's a lousy ship handler, a liar, and a pathetic coward.
Exactly.
I think Willie's attitude towards DeVriess would have changed if he'd had a chance to see him in action, or just how he handled the ship at sea for a prolonged time.
Of course, in the Navy, keeping the ship looking good -or as good as possible in combat conditions- is important. Even DeVriess admitted that the ship looked bad and he wasn't thrilled about it. However, it was hinted that the ship was so old that keeping the "essences" working properly took up so much time and energy that it just wasn't feasable to try and crack down too much on the overworked and overcrowded crew about the "accidents".
You're probably right. Willie would have changed his mind over time if he'd seen DeVreiss for a prolonged period at sea, just as he changed his mind about Queeg and about May Wynne.
It was all part of a maturation process in which a rich young kid learns to see past the outward ugliness or prettiness and appreciate the essential qualities of the thing.
Also, Keith was like a proto-Queeg to De Vries in disapproving his of sloppiness, then, when confronted with a mature version of this aspect of his (Keith's) personality when Queeg took charge, he gradually changed his mind. My only problem with this part of the film is that it goes by too fast, feels cut off from the rest of the movie, as if it were a prelude (which it sort of is). I'd like to have got to have known Capt. De Vries a little better.
shareInteresting point -- father figures, in fact. (Or role models, if you want.)
It's made clearer in the novel. The dominant figure in Keith's home life is his mother. She makes all the decisions. Keith's father is a doctor who has little to say and rarely advises his son, except just before he dies, when he tells Keith his life has been a failure because he took the easy, conventional path, married a socialite and made money in private practice, while giving up the young nurse he loved and the career in cancer research that he wanted to follow.
In other words, "Marry the girl and follow your bliss," as Joseph Campbell once put it.
The movie leaves too much out. It should have been a miniseries or something.
And the movie gives Capt. De Vries a rum deal. In the book his voice is "full of irony and authority." He's casually competent and has a wry sense of humor. In the movie, he's reduced to an arrogant and sarcastic authoritarian, a reverse snob who ridicules Keith's Princeton background.
I've never read the book (allergic to Herman Wouk maybe ), which I understand is Wouk's best work. Curious about Keith's father being a doctor. I'd have guessed an investment portfolio manager or whatever they called people who move money around back then, He comes off as a snotty preppie, while doctors' sons (I'm half-one,--the old man was a medical physiologist who quit a year before he'd have become an M.D. to pursue a career in research--just like dld man Keith should have done! ), dctors' sons were, where I was growing up, more high achievers than the lacrosse and tennis types.
De Vries struck me as an amiable slob, not too bright but bright enough (barely) to be a captain, a stand-up guy, not real Navy. Queeg was real Navy. Young Willie yanked his chains, fer sure, but Maryk loved the guy, and my sense is that most of the crew did, too. Keith got off on the wrong foot with De Vries.
Don't get me started on the "great Joseph Campbell". I can't stand the guy. We were reading him in high school literature class (the one for the bright kids), and he struck me as brilliant but confused, basically full of horse manure. All that Trickster and Joker business or whatever it was got tedious after a while, like a parlor game for people who've studied the classics and want a little more meat on the bone. Me, I couldn't see it.
When Bill Moyers did that series with Campbell some fifteen or twenty years later I watched a few episodes out of morbid curiosity, didn't dislike the man until the end when he said what you quoted ("follow your bliss?"), the worst advice you can give a kid. When I saw that, back in the mid-80s, it seemed too me already way to late for that. You could get away with a soul building type youth twenty years earlier, even ten if you were lucky, but not in the Age Of Reagan. After Campbell finished up I thought of all the young guys in, y'know, small towns in New Jersey, Ohio, suburbs of L.A., the old man wants them to go straight to college, become an accountant or an engineer or somethin' and the young dudes want to be (fill in the blanks) rock stars, movie directors, actor, gonzo journalists, etc., etc. (to channel the King Of Siam ), and so they move to some big city, get lost in the shuffle, hang out with bad people, dye their hair green, shoot heroin, become metrosexual, then HIV positive, only to die screaming from a rope in a walk-up cold water flat next to a swinging lightbulb! And all because of that stupid advice Joseph Campbell gave them!
Well, I couldn't agree more about "the great Joseph Campbell." I had to read all of his major works and plowed through them dutifully waiting for the clear white light. I have never read so much evidence -- detail piled upon detail -- that led in the end to such a wispy conclusion: "Follow your bliss."
It must have sounded great to the girls at Sarah Lawrence or Vassar, especially if their bliss in any way resembled a handsome, bright, ambitious pre-med guy at Columbia or Harvard. As you say, it likely didn't work out well for the dumb kid whose father worked in a brewery.
Maybe Campbell is partly responsible for the fact that one in five of us don't know the country we won our independence from. We've turned into a country of air guitar concerts and World's Wildest Police Chase video watchers.
I re-read "The Caine Mutiny" every couple of years, but my circumstances are special because I spent some years in the Coast Guard (in communications, like Keith) and I'm familiar with the social dynamics and the rituals.
Still -- read not as literature but just as a story book -- it's a rattling good tale. I haven't read much of Wouk's other stuff but they don't come anywhere near "The Caine Mutiny." And Queeg, of course, has become, not Captain Bligh, but an icon nonetheless. The younger folks who followed their bliss have never heard of either of them.
Thanks, Max. It's nice to have a freakin' genius agree with you, especially, on this topic, someone with a background in the field of the dude I was bashing. Your reviews are, as always, great to read. Best wishes...
shareI think Keith's dislike for Devries stemmed mainly from the incident early in the film in which Devries forced Keith to decide on the spot in front of the other officers in the wardroom whether to stay on board or to transfer to the admiral's staff per the telegram.This was inexcusable behavior on the part of Devries.
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