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Summary: War in Men
Review: This book is not about men at war as much as it is about war in men. It is about war alright...a war with fear for some, with jealosy for another, a war with death for another, war with faith for yet another. Every one of those C-for-Charli company has a war...not only with the unseen Japs and their deadly hidden machine guns...but also with themselves. In order to win the war with the outside enemy, they have to win a war with the inside enemy, the humanity in them, and they must lose the war against the animal in them... The story has its share of tactics and warfare...but its main concern is with the men at this war...and the war in these men. A truey wondrful read...
Rating: 
Summary: Better than the movie.
Review: I read the book before the movie came out.I feel that James Jones put some great details in the this book, but it is pretty long winded. I started to watch the movie but stopped it after 15 mins because it was so boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh!
Review: I had high hopes for this book but it turned out to be one of the worst books that I have ever read. It was tortuously slow, tedious and pretentious. I did not care about the characters. The author was consumed with providing trivial meaningless details and the battle scenes while at times compelling were inconsistent. Some were too long and some were too short. I found myself skipping entire sections of the book to try to get to interesting points. All in all--a disaster
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Summary: Great War Fiction
Review: I must admit to one thing. I read the first 80 pages and put this down for a while. After a month I picked it up again and was glad I did. Jones tells such a vivid story. He goes from character to character so well, and shows you what they feel, fear, and fantasize about. Yes it is slow, and yes if you saw the movie you might never wish to read this (I read the book long before the movie), however you will not be sorry once you have finished it.
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Summary: "It were better that war is so terrible...
Review: ...else we should grow to love it so." Robert E. Lee supposedly murmurred these sentiments as he watched hundreds of Union soldiers being mowed down by rifle and cannon fire as they tried to storm Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredricksburg in 1862. Nearly one hundred years later, C-for-Charlie Company finds out for itself on a deadly hill and jungle in the Solomon Islands the truth of Lee's sentiment. This is the best novelistic treatment of warfare in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Jones manages to skip the familiar cliches about how tragic it is that children must die in these wars or that their ultimate sacrifice has helped save a grateful nation. The truth is that there are no children in foxholes. And the United States, to its terrible shame, has yet to show even a modicum of gratitude to its World War II vets by building an appropriate monument to them on the Mall in Washington, D.C. One reader complains that Jones throws so many characters into the narrative that you need a scorecard to keep them all straight. While this may be confusing for the reader, it represents exactly the confusion that men in units like C-for-Charlie Company experienced every day as men were killed and wounded around them and strangers came to take their place. These strangers will only become known to the surviving members of C-for-Charlie Company as they suffer with the old timers. Jones is doing so much with this book -- consciously echoing the martial tragedy of the Iliad, crafting a realistic account of modern combat and asking questions about how men resolve the terrors of combat and what that numbing experience does to their sense of self, their sense of humanity. He also uses a Joycean amalgam of puns, phrases run together and other techniques to get at the individual psychological reality underlying each character's reaction to events in the external world. This is a fantastic novel for any age. Younger readers who are not familiar with the Guadalcanal campaign might want to learn a little bit about that campaign and, in particular, the geography of the island itself (although Jones notes that places like the Dancing Elephant are fictional in nature). Teachers using this novel might want to also supplement it with Terrence Malick's film version of the book. I loved the movie, but thought it was a strange sort of war movie. In retrospect, having now read "Thin Red Line," I can see that Malick did an outstanding job of hewing to the spirit of Jones' work.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth a read
Review: While Jones' take on the second World War is supremely readable in all its forms, including THE THIN RED LINE, he is not, as some would have us believe, the utmost authority on any of the subjects that he undertakes. His basic, journalistic style is commendable considering the subject matter, but while Jones seems to employ it out of necessity Hemingway glorified it as a means to a very desirable end. Jones' use of multiple narrators is interesting, as well, but his catalogue of characters becomes so large that the reader is forced to bookmark the dramatis personae. In this regard, Mailer trumps Jones with THE NAKED AND THE DEAD where many narrators are used and the reader cares about each as an individual. A good book, but Jones is the master neither of his style, nor of his subject matter.
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Summary: A GREAT BOOK
Review: I must say that this book is one of the best war novels ever written. I have read Jones' earlier novel in the trilogy and The Thin Red Line is an excellent companion to "From Here to Eternity" This book certainly captures the horrors of any war and must be read by any teen who thinks they're immortal. Actually I am a teen but am an avid reader and I mostly read about history from 1900-2000. I am most interested in WWII and The Korean conflict. This book, as well as "From Here to Eternity" and "Whistle" which I have read, certainly tells you that war is terrible and should not happen unless there are really threatening events that take place. But I must say that this book was kind of hard to get by because of the Homosexuality between some characters and how Soldiers often beat prisoners. I am sure this kind of thing happened occasionally but not every day. Maybe I am wrong considering Jones was in the war himself and the reason he wrote this book was to explain what he and his generation went through. I had also seen the movie and loved it but I must say that war is very is depressing and hard to sit through.
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Summary: Powerful
Review: To say that this book is outstanding is an understatement. The Thin Red Line is one of the greatest books I have ever read concerning the infantryman at war. If you liked All Quiet on the Western Front or A Midnight Clear (the books or the movies) you will love this book. Although the film is one of my favorites, I did not really understand it until I read the book on which it is based. So if you weren't too thrilled with the movie as I was, read this book and watch it again. I guarantee you will like it a whole lot more. I did. Because of this book, I now understand what my great-uncle must have gone through on Saipan and Okinawa where he was killed in action. This book made me appreciate the sacrifices of the men who fought the war in the Pacific a lot more than I already did. Depressing, terrifying, humorous, touching... Read this book immediately! You won't regret it.
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Summary: A real sense of being in battle
Review: James Jones loves the American Soldier. He loves the men from C for Charlie Company. They are the story. He describes many events that comprise a battle, the transport, the encampment, the waiting, the shelling, the shooting, the fighting, the bravery, the cowardice. We enter the minds of those who fight. Some fight for politcal advancement. Some fight for fear of being labled a coward. Some fight just becuase they love the company and men they're fighting with. The main characters are John Bell, a former engineering officer who resigns his commission to be with his wife. He opens the story as a lowly private. The fear of being killed hardly enters his mind. He's too worried that his wife is cheating on him to think about anything else. Corporal Fife, the company clerk and coward, learns to fight and love it. 1st Sergeant Welsh is the madman leader of the non-coms who does surprisingly little fighting. He likes to walk around and stir the pot. This is probably due to his two canteens full of gin. There are many other important characters, but interesting to me is a minor one named Witt. Witt, is the doppleganger of Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt from Jones first book of the trilogy From Here to Eternity. Witt, like Prewitt is a strong willed Kentuky boy who was once a regimental boxer. In this book he drifts in and out of the company as it suits him. The 1998 movie focuses on him much more than the novel. If you are interested in World War II, you'll enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: A classic that is still worth reading
Review: I think reviews are most effective if you compare the book in question to others that most of us have read, so prospective readers have something to measure it against. The Thin Red Line could be best described as a war novel of action, suspense, and revealing characterizations of combat soldiers--with the relentless pace and stunning power of war genre gems like The Triumph and the Glory and The Killer Angels, with an authoritative style that reflects the author's own experience in WWII.
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