during war and the division between rank. Lieutenant Hearn's death is immediate and has little recovery time, with the platoon mourning for ten or twenty seconds. Croft is even relieved by Hearn's death, as he is now in charge of the platoon again. In contrast, Roth's death "shatter[s] the platoon." Instead of choosing to face Croft, Roth chose to risk falling to his death. Not only is the platoon shattered, Mailer underlines the division between the empowered and powerless, the narrator declares, "It was Croft's fault that Roth had been killed." Power: Mailer's predominant theme throughout The Naked and the Dead is illustrated through the power relations among the men, especially the relationships between commanding officers and subordinates. Power is distilled in General Cummings's character. Cummings compares himself to the “chief monk” and God throughout the book. He also openly supports the class system within the military, and states Hearn must accept the “emotional prejudices of his class”, especially since he is an officer. People of higher ranks like Hearn and Cummings, after all, enjoy a better quality of life than the other foot soldiers. They sleep in larger staterooms while the soldiers share small rooms and are jammed into cots. This power system and power relations is reinforced within the missions. After Hearn dies, Croft is "relieved" that there is no longer a rival to his power and takes over leading the platoon up the mountain. While the other soldiers clearly want to stop and give up, they continue hiking the mountain simply because Croft commands them to. Chickenshit, as termed by Paul Fussell in Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, was a major aspect of the theme of power in the novel. This is shown in how Cummings makes Hearn do humiliating tasks and in the end sends him on a mission knowing he will die, which is the ultimate chickenshit since he sent him to die solely to demonstrate his power. This is another instance where the undemocratic nature of the Army is apparent. Analogous to the replacement of "fuck" with "fug," Fussell commented on the obscenity in war, arguing that explicit language in wartime became precious as a way for millions of conscripts to note, in a licensed way, their bitterness and anger. During his service in World War II, Mailer did not yet have a plan for his war novel, but knew