Part IV, Chapters 6-11 Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 6, the prisoners are taken via bus to Occaquan, Virginia, where they are processed and then sent to large rooms filled with bunk beds. Rumors make the rounds about whether or not the commissioners will be able to process them or whether they'll have to spend the night there. Mailer sees Walter Teague on a bunk bed teaching his Leninism to a group of fifteen men who have gathered around the bunk to listen. Mailer sees many of his Greenwich Village acquaintances and settles down on a bunk next to the bunk of Noam Chomsky, famed linguist of MIT.

In Chapter 7, Mailer discusses the war in Vietnam. He takes the arguments posed by supporters and protesters and tries to examine each argument. He calls the supporters "Hawks" and the protesters "Doves." He says that...