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Matterhorn
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Matterhorn (2010) (edit title/settings)

A Novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line . It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “It occurred to him that because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all.”
  • “There it is.”
  • “People who didn't even know each other were going to kill themselves over a hill that none of them cared about”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.
    Highlighted by 229 Kindle customers
  • He’d choose to stay on the hill and do what he could to save those around him. The choice comforted him and calmed him down. Dying this way was a better way to die because living this way was a better way to live.
    Highlighted by 177 Kindle customers
  • He knew that all of them were shadows: the chanters, the dead, the living. All shadows, moving across this landscape of mountains and valleys, changing the pattern of things as they moved but leaving nothing changed when they left. Only the shadows themselves could change.
    Highlighted by 168 Kindle customers
  • Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched everything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him.
    Highlighted by 163 Kindle customers
  • Hawke had learned long ago that what really mattered in combat was what people were like when they were exhausted.
    Highlighted by 160 Kindle customers
  • Being human was the best he could do. Without man there would be no evil. But there was also no good, nothing moral built over the world of fact. Humans were responsible for it all. He laughed at the cosmic joke, but he felt heartsick.
    Highlighted by 158 Kindle customers
  • He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn’t evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.
    Highlighted by 151 Kindle customers
  • “Between the emotion and the response, the desire and the spasm, falls the shadow,”
    Highlighted by 151 Kindle customers
  • Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live, succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride.
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
  • It occurred to him that because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all.
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
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Organizations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

Mellas stood beneath the gray monsoon clouds on the narrow strip of cleared ground between the edge of the jungle and the relative safety of hte perimeter wire.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Victory: What does victory mean in the midst of war?

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Rainy Day Books (Staff Picks for 2010). (community list)
This book is in American Library Association Notable Books for Adults. (authoritative list)
This book is in Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Karl Marlantes (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780802119285
Page Count: 592

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: 2010549578
  • Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Adult content about war.

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Naked and the Dead
  • The Thin Red Line
  • The Young Lions
  • Knife song Korea : a novel

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • The Killing Zone
  • Blood Trails
  • Vietnam
  • A Hard Place: A Sergeants Tale
  • Warriors: An Infantryman's Memoir of Vietnam

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