The chief sufferer — the term "hero" does not suit any of Jones's protagonists — of From Here to Eternity is Robert E. Lee Prewitt, as good at boxing as he is at bugling, and he has to renounce both the civilized, beautiful thing he loves and the primitive destructive urge he comes to hate.

Prewitt also loves the Army, and his love kills him because he cannot reconcile his own integrity with the authority that insists he give it up.

Throughout From Here to Eternity Prewitt must make sacrifice after sacrifice to his principles. He transfers out of the Bugle Corps because the Chief Bugler passes him over; he goes to the stockade for refusing to box after blinding a friend; he goes AWOL and dies realizing the agonizing truth: "All things killed the men who loved them.

Which, after all, was as it should be."

In...