Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

This grimly realistic depiction of army life follows a trio of idealists as they contend with the regimentation, violence, and boredom of military service. Fuselli, a San Francisco store clerk, embraces conformity in the hopes of a promotion. Chrisfield, an Indiana farm boy, and Andrews, a gifted musician, are repelled by the army's mind-numbing routines and battlefield horrors. Incited past the point of endurance, the soldiers respond with rancor and murderous rage. This powerful exploration of warfare's dehumanizing effects remains chillingly contemporary. Unabridged republication of the classic 1921 edition.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, War, World War I, Literature, American

430 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1921

About the author

John Dos Passos was a prominent American novelist, artist, and political thinker best known for his U.S.A. trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—a groundbreaking work of modernist fiction that employed experimental narrative techniques to depict the complexities of early 20th-century American life. Born in Chicago in 1896, he was educated at Harvard and served as an ambulance driver during World War I, experiences that deeply influenced his early literary themes. His first novel, One Man’s Initiation: 1917, and the antiwar Three Soldiers drew on his wartime observations and marked him as a major voice among the Lost Generation.
Dos Passos’s 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer brought him widespread recognition and introduced stylistic innovations that would define his later work. His U.S.A. trilogy fused fiction, biography, newsreel-style reportage, and autobiographical “Camera Eye” sections to explore the impact of capitalism, war, and political disillusionment on the American psyche. Once aligned with leftist politics, Dos Passos grew increasingly disillusioned with Communism, especially after the murder of his friend José Robles during the Spanish Civil War—a turning point that led to a break with Ernest Hemingway and a sharp turn toward conservatism.
Throughout his career, Dos Passos remained politically engaged, writing essays, journalism, and historical studies while also campaigning for right-leaning figures like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s. He contributed to publications such as American Heritage, National Review, and The Freeman, and published over forty books including biographies and historical reflections. Despite political shifts, his commitment to liberty and skepticism of authoritarianism remained central themes.
Also a visual artist, Dos Passos created cover art and illustrations for many of his own books, exhibiting a style influenced by modernist European art. Though less acclaimed for his painting, he remained artistically active throughout his life. His multidisciplinary approach and innovations in narrative structure influenced numerous writers and filmmakers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer and Adam Curtis.
Later recognized with the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for literature in 1967, Dos Passos’s legacy endures through his literary innovations and sharp commentary on American identity. He died in 1970, leaving behind a vast and diverse body of work that continues to shape the landscape of American fiction.

Reviews

[AiK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Здесь в GR довольно невысокие оценки, видимо, роман не пользуется достойной его популярностью. Между тем, Джона Дос Пассоса высоко ценил Жан-Поль Сартр и очень хорошую рецензию по роману «Три солдата» сделал Ф. Скотт Фицджеральд. Я рекомендую прочитать эту рецензию. Согласитесь, это дорогого стоит.
Это глубокая антивоенная книга, с беспощадной критикой войны, ее несправедливости, предательства, лицемерия. Действие происходит во время и после Первой мировой войны. Роман во времени распределен на три части – мобилизация, военные действия и нахождение американского контингента на территории Франции после перемирия в ожидании переброски на родину. Огромное количество героев немного усложняет восприятие, но, как следует из названия, автор показывает судьбы трех солдат – Фюзелли, Крисфилда и Эндрюса. Примечательны их мотивы и настроения. Простоватый малый Фюзелли с самого начала построил свой вариант американской мечты – выслужиться на войне и пробиться в офицеры, для этого он, как мог, интриговал и выслуживался перед младшими офицерами. Вначале ему вроде повезло, его заметили, собирались поднять до капрала. Но все пошло не так, попал в дисциплинарную часть, потом заболел. Так и окончил войну солдатом. Крисфилд добился капральского чина, но он дезертировал. Джон Эндрюс был мыслящим человеком, интеллигентом, музыкантом, но взбунтовавшись против своего беспричинного ареста, он стал дезертиром.
До начала военных действий, кажется, что это не война, солдаты и офицеры только и делают, что пьянствуют в кабачках и ресторанах, заглядываются на девушек, - не война, а просто развеселая жизнь. Имеет место огромное неравенство – безденежные местные жители, разоренные войной, и американские солдаты, все при деньгах, при хорошем довольствии с обязательной плиткой шоколада. Но когда начинается бойня, автор безжалостно показывает смерти, постоянный страх и наваждение странных запахов – не началась ли газовая атака, и кто первым оденет противогаз, если команды не было, постылый быт в сырых окопах и бараках, эти неистребимые вши – неизменные спутники войны, и болезни, вроде туберкулеза. Надо отметить, что пропаганда тоже работала в американской армии, например, за слова о несправедливости войны можно было попасть под трибунал с самыми серьезными последствиями. Время в Париже перед передислокацией в Америку похоже на времена мобилизации – те же кабачки и рестораны, но здесь начинается массовое дезертирство. Солдаты задаются вопросом: почему бы не отпустить людей домой? Казалось бы, мирное время, какие дезертиры? Дос Пассос подвергает критике царившие в американской армии порядки: произвол военной полиции. За отсутствие документов отправляли в штрафбат, при этом никто не собирался разбираться, наводить справки в части проштрафившегося солдата. Условия были невыносимыми и многие бежали, причем за это можно было вполне получить в качестве приговора трибунала расстрел или пожизненное заключение.
Многим не понравится то, что Дос Пассос поднимает в романе вопрос о том, что будет, если будет мировая революция? Но мне кажется, Дос Пассос просто правдиво описал время – в конце 1910-х было много людей, которые думали о коммунизме, причем разных мастей – и социалисты, и анархисты, и много разных других течений. Он просто правдиво показал эти настроения в обществе. Мне кажется, главным идеалом Дон Пассоса была свобода, правда и справедливость. Свобода личности, чтобы она не была винтиком в военной машине.

[Agir(آگِر) · Rating 2 out of 5]

نه
آنقدرها سخت نبود؛
برای منی که شیفته‌ی کتاب‌های ضدِ جنگم
این کتاب را صد صفحه نخوانده کنار بگذارم

دیگر کتابها دردی را درمان نمی‌کنند
یا
من آنقدر پیر شده‌ام که از درک این دنیای جنگ‌طلب عاجرم
یا
هیچی حدی برای پستیِ انسان وجود ندارد

جنگ پایان‌ناپذیرست
همه باید فاشیست شویم
و هم را تکه پاره کنیم...
به امیدِ جهانی بدونِ انسان
و بدونِ جنگ

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 1 out of 5]

کتاب سه سرباز جان دوس پاسوس هیچ نشانه ای از یک اثر ضد جنگ ندارد ، اساسا هیولای جنگ حضور چندانی در کتاب نویسنده نداشته است ، آنچه که در کتاب شاهد هستیم بیشتر همانند ماجراجویی چند جوان آمریکایی در فرانسه و پاریس در شرایطی نه چندان عادی ایست .
این جوانان آرزوهای زیادی ندارند ، اینکه بتوانند زیبارویی فرانسوی پیدا کنند و اوقات خود را به خوشی بگذرانند برایشان کافی ایست ، خواننده نباید انتظار کلام فلسفی از آنان داشته باشد ، سرنوشت آنها هم زود برای خواننده روشن می شود .
کتاب آقای پاسوس ممکن است برای خوانندگان قرن گذشته اندکی اعتراض آمیز باشد ولی با گذشت سال ها و در حالی که جنبشهای اعتراضی قدرت و بُرد بسیاری پیدا کرده اند و عملا پایان برخی از جنگها را اعتراضات مردم رقم زده ، کلام نویسنده بسیار کهنه و قدیمی و البته شعاری به نظر می رسد .

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Dos Passos was politicized by his experiences of war. During World War I he served as an ambulance driver in Italy and France and his experiences led him to become a Communist. Later, his experiences during the Spanish Civil War caused him to become disenchanted with the left and his politics became increasingly conservative during the 1950s.

When this novel was published in 1921, it caused a sensation. A direct result of Dos Passos’ World War I experiences, it’s a passionate anti-war polemic, albeit one that deals less with the horror of actual warfare and more with the pettiness, corruption and cruelty of military life. The work relates the experiences of three young American men with different backgrounds and motivations, who embark for Europe to serve their country. Ultimately, the narrative focuses on John Andrews, a sensitive Harvard-educated musician, whose attitudes most closely reflect those of the author.

Had I not listened to the audiobook version of the novel immediately after listening to Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, I suspect that I would have liked it more. While the writing is powerful and unsentimental, its verbosity does not compare well with Hemingway’s simpler, less cluttered style. The novel would have been much better, I think, – and probably more widely read today – if the prose wasn’t weighed down by quite so many adverbs, adjectives and similes. Even though I usually love ornate prose, the language in this novel at times made me impatient. Further, I was never in any doubt as to what the author wanted me to think and how he wanted me to feel, when I would have preferred to simply feel and think for myself.

That said, I don’t regret the time I spent listening to the novel, which was beautifully narrated by George Guidall, and I plan to read more of Dos Passos’ work. My interest in his writing has been sparked by my “Lost Generation” reading project. It’s been interesting to discover a writer who was well known and critically well received in his time. It’s a shame that he’s not better known now.

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to Three Soldiers after hearing an old time radio show that brings literature to the airways & wanting to know the whole book as John Dos Passos intended. I have always enjoyed a good war story either written or on film when the human element is brought to light & in this novel I was not disappointed. This not a book just about the world war 1, but it is about the American experience in that war seen through a man that was young American, that volunteered his services before America's involvement & also after American intervention. I love books written by people that lived during those times and write their thoughts about it. It was apparent before googling the author that he had socialist leanings and was not too found of America by what he wrote as a young man & later in life he became a Barry Goldwater supporter, total opposite.

The review maybe a spoiler so if you rather not read further because of that, it would perhaps be wise. This book says it is about 3 soldiers but it was mostly about one in particular, John Andrews & many other soldiers. The other two main ones have other issues which makes the military hard on them. This book starts out with the drafting of some soldiers, overseas voyage to France which was described with all its horrors, the war, Armistice & keeping the peace until the troops leave. I was fascinated with the sentiment, the descriptions and the storyline but the main characters were quite unlikable to me & especially John Andrews but I enjoyed the story and will read more of John Dos Passos' novels.

There was such un American sentiment from this author & it was interesting as a young man he was socialist/communist & evolved as he aged to a conservative later in life. John Andrews kept mentioning slavery as regards to the military and his draft. It seems funny looking through 1921 eyes that the he sees USSR as having the right idea about rebellion and that they will be freer than a US soldier drafted who after the war can go back to life whereas the Soviet will be restricted & may have to serve longer depending on government whims. The peace conference after Armistice seem as described to be doomed, as already the defeated Germans are acting up. Knowing that the military is not perfect as anything else, it seems that the author painted more a negative light on the YMCA & rank officials. The soldiers overseas deployment sounded horrific, TB, sickness, packed like sardines & dead bodies thrown overboard. Today's military have that easier it seems. The song that the soldiers sang was cleaned up by the public. The sexual transmitted diseases was down played & as the promiscuity with French woman & excessive drinking.

John Andrews was unbearable young person who seemed to have such child like views that all centered on himself. The book was mostly about him. He thinks & hates his so called slavery in the military but goes along to a point but not anything farther. He finally finds a way to escape after the war ended by getting a military okay for attending a college in Paris for his music ability. It seems strange that the USA would approve such a scheme but he tries hard and convinces. He meets many friends & thinks he loves a girl Jeanne whose family was reduced after the war & she has to work herself. It seems she might love him in return but after he slept with her he decides he wishes he was in love with her. He decides not to see her again, she might have helped him after he deserted. He then meets Genevieve & does not like her but starts to after he decides she will help him with his music. They become friendly & go to the country to see her home. He is picked up by MP & they laugh at him stating he is in a college program. No trial just hard labor & he can't escape or prove his situation. He and another young kid decide to desert by going overboard & swimming to a French barge. It seems that John has only escaped & the other boy is unknown.

He is helped but wants to return to Paris even with all the MP & no longer wearing an uniform which was thrown overboard. He wants to see Genevieve & she is happy until he tells her about his situation. She is disgusted & she lets him down slowly. Her family leaves the country but only she knows of his activity, and tells him to leave the country. His landlady who when knowing he was friends with Genevieve was easier on him but after it came apparent that he was alone & penniless called the MP. He had Genevieve's gun but in the end he could not use it because the landlady took it away. They take him in the end.

Dan Fuselli was annoying also but not as bad. He wanted to advance but he could not and ended for some reason on KP duty. His girl Mebe who he stated he loved until he had found a French girl to have relations with & Mebe married someone else soon after he was deployed. Always thinking he was grand but every time.

Chrisfield was in rage & he ended killing Anderson with a grenade. He advances but deserts also but do to thinking someone knows about what he did in killing with rage. He did not mind being rank and file and not thinking.

OTR NBC University Theater link added - The book I remember being quite different but not too much.
https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the reviews on this site said reading Three Soldiers is like watching a movie, “the best kind of movie.” One that doesn’t explain its images or dilute the story with too much exposition. Terrence Malick directed this in my head. Malick’s storytelling style would fit the austere and oblique parts of Three Soldiers, and the novel’s big theme of desertion would jive with one of Malick’s favorite motifs: the freebooting idylls of fugitives living it up before doom closes in - a doom that always takes the form of pursuit through woods by armed men, be they the shotgun sheriffs of Badlands, the mounted police of Days of Heaven, or the Japanese jungle raiders in The Thin Red Line. Such pursuits, real and rumored, recur throughout Three Soldiers, a novel concerned with discipline and punishment, with war as a steroid of the state, with desertion as spiritual renewal and on and on. The three main characters are constantly hearing, telling, re-telling, and fashioning nightmares from stories of other soldiers who could no longer take the humiliations, the drudgery, the merciless chickenshit of Army life and who struck an officer, or stole a car, or went on a bender, and then had to run from hunting parties of trigger-happy MPs.

Dos Passos’s portrayal of the organized chain of petty tyrannies that keep a war machine running to the standards of modern, “scientific” management necessarily attracts him to the misfits who use mobilization as a cover for personal errands, who somehow buck the system and do their own thing in its midst. None of the three main characters are in that category, they suffer more or less obediently, at least as long as the fighting lasts, but the narrative is shot through with incidental figures who just don’t give a fuck at all, who surf the inevitable snafus, and for whom America’s participation in the war means nothing but free passage to France, the freebooter’s dream kingdom of plentiful wine cellars and cream-fed country daughters.

There’s “Wild” Dan Cohen, his garb a fool’s motley of Allied uniforms, his status a gray zone somewhere between soldier and deserter, with various courts-martial looming vaguely over his rackishly-hatted head. Dan was a driver in the army’s motor pool (like the black marketeer/fledgling pimp Tobey Maguire played in The Good German), and over a bottle of champagne mooched off more disciplined doughboys (staying straight had one advantage: a paycheck) tells them the story—-an eminently cinematic interlude—-of the time he was ordered to help drive a convoy of staff cars from depot A to depot B. His and a buddy’s cars brought up the rear, and they peeled off at every gin-mill and café along the route to belly up on cognac, and then drove like hell to catch up with the rest; eventually they lost the convoy altogether and, in the company of a few barely conscious officers on their own profound bender, took off on a joyride through various villages until one of the officers fell out and busted his head. Dan and his buddy survived a hail of MP bullets, were apprehended and sent straight to the front. Dan jumped out of the cattle car sending him to slaughter, chucked his rifle, and reported back to the motor pool, whose officers had been curious as to his fate. He never heard from his buddy again. “It’s a great war, I tell you,” Dan affirms. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

But back to the titular characters. There’s Fuselli, a simple-hearted naïf who goes to war thinking it’all be like D.W. Griffith, a careful conformist whose reaction to the obvious indignity and cruelty of his immediate society is to reassure himself that if he just keeps his mouth shut and gets noticed by the right people he’ll be promoted to corporal, and thereby be elevated a few privileged inches out of the engulfing bullshit. The army breaks him down anyway, which is either hilarious and totally what he deserves for being so passive, or else really, really sad (the downward mobility of much of the American middle class provokes a similar ambivalence in me). Chrisfield is an Indiana farm boy, Faulkernian before Faulkner. He inhabits a bubble of hallucinatory hillbilly violence - pulling his knife on another soldier, detonating grenades in the night for kicks, fragging a wounded sergeant who once picked on him - when not in the elevating (and restraining) company of Andrews, wayward haute bourgeois, Harvard man in the ranks; also, the novel’s Sensitive Soul, its artist-nerved register of the coarsening conditions. Andrews nourishes his superfine sensibility with the erotic fantasia of Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, and harbors musical ambitions of an Art Nouveau/Ballet Russes lineage, absorbed in polishing fragments of a luscious tone poem he plans to call The Queen of Sheba.

The lean descriptive prose, the austerity and obliqueness that I’ve referred to as the novel’s best features co-exist fascinatingly with the garrulous soul-searching and cheeseball reveries of Andrews. Indirect discourse is indirect discourse, but still: one feels that both character and creator are half-baked; the distance between Dos Passos and Andrews, between the boy who suffers and the man who creates, appears much closer than that separating Joyce and Stephen Daedalus, Rilke and Malte Laurids Brigge. That’s to be expected, Three Soldiers was the second novel of a twenty-five year-old, and, with a publication date of 1921, very close to the wartime experiences that fed it. In this novel Dos Passos seems not yet emerged from the crisis of style then in vogue, portraying and in some sense experiencing it through Andrews. The mind in a youthful lyrical fervor undergoes a brutalizing nervous shock, and must accommodate an inescapable disillusion, must shape an aesthetic out of what’s unavoidably at hand. In the margins of The Queen of Sheba, Andrews occasionally dreams of a dry, rhythmic style, a white man’s jazz, with which he might set audiences aquiver by conveying the machined movements of infantry drill, as Honegger conveyed the locomotive (Pacific 231) and Prokofiev industrial labor (his Sovietish ballet Le Pas d’Acier, “the steel step ”).

The less articulate Fuselli and Chrisfield don’t hold forth, and their episodes show the novel at its freshest. Fuselli transfers to a headquarters company in hopes of getting noticed by the higher ups in a genteel indoors assignment. Enlisted men are slaves, so he’s mostly just cleans up. When this kind of thing happens to Andrews, he has feelings at paragraph length; Fuselli’s feelings are never explicitly described, but the depth of his disappointment is elegantly suggested by an exact account of what we don’t need to be told is a numbing and dispiriting servitude. The precise image of Fuselli cleaning a staircase, sweeping the dust down from step to step, is all the reader needs to see. At its best Three Soldiers is fine-grained and quietly devastating, a mosaic of striking images and sharp cinematic vignettes. Dos Passos shows the same mixture of pessimism, restraint and propriety I like in Richard Yates.

The man on the far left in the picture below is General Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, a legendary hardass and old school disciplinarian. He would have been the last American officer to go on a cognac-fueled joyride through the French countryside, but the staff car, the cobblestones, and the café sign were props in Wild Dan Cohen’s adventure.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end you are fundamentally alone and no matter how much you would like to imagine that others could complete you or even just understand you, the saddest truth is that even this is far too much to ask.

If this review is to have no spoilers, then this must be a kind of non-review. However, in some ways this review might tell you more about this novel than any other I could write.

This is a painfully sad story, a realist novel told about First World War – so pain is obligatory. The guiding metaphor is one in which humanity is turned into a kind of enormous steam-age machine; a huffing monster of hammer blows that's only function is to forge heartless men in clockwork precision matched to the regulations and synchronisations of army life. Man as machine is not pretty to watch, not in being made nor in operation nor in deployment. For the point is that all are to have their humanity stolen from them, whether they are seeking to ‘make it big’ or to just ‘blend in’ or, most pathetically of all, to somehow preserve their dignity; the crushing weight – or rather, the grinding regularity - of the rhythms of the machine reduces all before it to an orderly, mechanical sameness that derives its various meanings out of discipline and punishment. Meaning is not defined as you might expect, as steps along the path to victory, but rather in endless and nearly pointless defeats inflicted on you by those around you, those supposed to be on your own side. It is not too much to wonder if the enemy being fought is really the Germans but rather your own freedoms.

Even if you finally ‘revenge’ yourself – you will only do so through losing your humanity and it is clear this will haunt you throughout the rest of your life – like a character from a tragedy: a Banquo or Othello, where revenge is always punished.

Even if you achieve your dream – it will only be at the cost of first bowing and scraping and even then, even after this humiliation, your dream will only remain like a snowflake against skin, constantly reminding you of just how ephemeral your achievements will always remain. How, at a moment’s notice (no, in fact, even without notice), all you have, all you ever desired, can be stolen away – oh, no, it is even worse than this, they can be erased as if they never even existed, could never have existed, to become like something half-remembered, vaguely from a dream that has morphed itself into nightmare even in being remembered.

In a million ways every day you are reminded that whatever it is that constitutes your ‘individuality’ is that which is most in need of being eradicated for being inefficient or harmful to good order. What most makes you who you are is what is defined by those in power as being an aberrant deformity that needs to be standardising out of existence so as to ensure you meet the needs of the Age’s great task. For is there any hope of ever forgetting the life you now live, the person you have now become? Or of ever again becoming what you once were? Now that even your walk will forever be a constant reminder to you of now, because even the length of your stride has had to be adjusted so as to match the strides of all those you march beside – all those you will always march in stride with.

Keep step, drill, for preparedness is all.

Or rather, all is hierarchy and the duties and obligations of hierarchy. Humiliation and servitude – these are the lessons - only alleviated or punctuated with references to killing Negroes down South or raping German women in revenge for German atrocities in Belgium (and all this said without even a hint of irony by soldiers in their ‘manly conversations’). Such talk becomes one of those bizarre rituals of the dispossessed, a kind of repulsive pride, a variety of bullying self-assertion by men reduced to worthlessness except in the value they have in fulfilling the tasks they have been trained for, that they remain perpetually waiting for. For such talk is all that is left to these ‘men’, the only way for them to assert their position in the social order, to show their worthiness. Their value as human beings is asserted by reference and in counter-distinction to those even less powerful than themselves – and the sad fact is that all that this bravado shows is a series of grotesque highlights further etching out their impotence and powerlessness, a kind of sharpening around about the contours of their own slavery.

For how else can we make the world safe for democracy then by crushing the free will of a generation of young men? Than by stealing away from them their very lives so as to leave them in endless rows of graves where they will be forced to stand forever at attention and in formation?

And if not safe for democracy, then what of religion? Where churchmen say they will do everything within their ‘earthly power’ to help you – and they say this ‘earthly power’ in parenthesis, because they know you do not believe in their god – so, their stressing ‘earthly power’ lets you know they will do nothing, lets you know why they will do nothing – where words that sound positive and hopeful give subtle clues to explain the most callous punishments and pointless revenges.

Then there are the endless blows of authority repeatedly hitting you on the side of the face and leaving you dazed, humiliated, seasick, swimming, cowering and cold in your hiding - trapped where there is no where left to turn, no one left to turn to, nothing left to fight for or to believe in – only the blows, or the threat of more blows, until that is all that remains.

This is an aching and painful story, beautifully told, of the crushing of the human spirit when all point to that crushing has gone. A story of humanity’s near endless capacity for kindness and generosity but counterposed by our matching capacity for truly pointless cruelty – or rather various forms of cruelties: both careless and calculated. The crimes authority commits stretch the entire spectrum from considered to thoughtless, but perhaps they are all a consequence of the machine itself, much more than of the people who make up that machine.

This book is a call for some kind of revolution – an endlessly personal kind of revolution, so perhaps it is a call for no kind of revolution at all – but come the hour, let me be prepared to fight in that cause and not shirk or turn my back.

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were once three soldiers of The Great War. And three characters that I can't say I really cared about. Maybe it's because after 450+ pages, I still hadn't figured out what made them tick. What makes that odd is that they spent the entire book lost in introspection and talking about themselves.

They did a lot of eating and talking about what they missed about home. They huddled up to keep warm and discussed how they couldn't wait to get to the front. Then they drank cognac at small cafes and talked some more.

This is the only war book I've ever read that had no combat scenes.

On the plus side, the author is a master at describing scenery:

The sun had set. The sky was full of lilac and bright purple and carmine. Among the deep blue shadows lights were coming on, primrose-colored street lamps, violet arc lights, ruddy sheets of light poured out of shop windows.

Another scene I liked was where one soldier stepped out of a his marching platoon to watch some frogs in a puddle - a simple, perfect moment of life set against slaughter.

The book had a very modern feel to it, and a good, but dispiriting ending.

Manhattan Transfer now sits glaring at me from the shelf. I'll get to it one of these days. Maybe.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read a World War I novel. Instead, I read a novel about some men who hated the army. dos Passos would have served his audience better had he provided some detail that leads to these men hating the army. There is some complaint that all they do is go on marches, although we're never there when they actually *do* go on marches. Yep, the army needs its men kept busy, to work as a unit, and to gain physical strength - they still do this and it still works. And, somehow, dos Passos seemed to be of the opinion that everyone should be in charge of whatever work they wanted to do - even in the Army! - and that the officers telling them what to do are making the soldiers "slaves." I understand that dos Passos eventually became disabused of the utopia of communism, but he had not been so enlightened when he penned this.

He seemed to want to make sure his readers could envision his scenes in color.

They passed the leafless gardens of the Tuileries on one side, and the great inner courts of the Louvre, with their purple mansard roofs and their high chimneys on the other, and saw for a second the river, dull jade green, and the plane trees splotched with brown and cream color along the quais, before they were lost in the narrow brownish-grey streets of the old quarters.

I did not especially like his characters, although likability isn't a requirement for me, but the characterizations might have been better. The prose wasn't great, but I've read worse and I expect he got better. If you're looking for action, look elsewhere, because dos Passos' enemy in this one are the non-coms and officers. This is my first by the author, and I'll probably try at least one more, as this is one of his earliest works. Three stars, but nearer two than four.

[KOMET · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Three Soldiers" is one of the earliest novels to come out of the First World War to express the disgust and disillusionment felt by many Americans who had participated in it.

Dos Passos (who had served as an ambulance driver in Italy during the war) introduces the reader to 3 distinctive characters who are representative of America's diversity. First, there's Chrisfield, an Indiana farmboy who's a bit rough round the edges and always spoiling for a fight. Second, there is Dan Fuselli, a first generation Italian-American from San Francisco who looks upon the Army as a gateway to a better life after the war. He goes out of his way to make himself useful to his superior officers in base camp (and later in France) in hopes of gaining advancement. Making sergeant is his ultimate dream, for an NCO (non-commissioned officer) is in a position to assert authority over the men in his charge. Third, comes John Andrews, a New Yorker by way of Virginia (where he spent his early life with his mother) and a Harvard graduate, too, who enters the Army as an idealist. He's excited about being part of a great crusade, as he sees it, to "make the world safe for democracy" and give Kaiser Bill a real butt-kickin'. The 3 men meet during basic training, which proves to be a dispiriting experience for all of them. The regimentation and discipline -- as well as contending with the Army bureaucracy and the general Army ethos --- weigh them down.

Fuselli is the first to be shipped to France. Dos Passos gives the reader a bird's eye view of Fuselli's departure from base camp to embarkation point on the East Coast, and the subsequent voyage to France. Reading these passages almost made me feel that I was on deck an overcrowded troopship, huddled in an Army trenchcoat for warmth, looking out over the ocean and wondering how many U-boats are lying in wait.

Once situated in France, Fuselli is chagrined to learn that, instead of being posted to a unit bound for the Front, he is, instead, posted to a rear-echelon medical unit. This doesn't sit well for him. But he bides his time currying favor with his superior officers. Eventually, his unit is called up in the wake of the German offensives of the spring and summer of 1918. But Fuselli allows himself to be talked into applying for reassigment to another unit (in staff headquarters) on the eve of departure for combat in hopes of receiving a permanent promotion to corporal. (By now, he had risen to the rank of private first class.)


Chrisfield and John Andrews are also sent to France, where each of them experience some combat in the late stages of the war. But what contrasts this book with Erich Maria Remarque's "ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT", is that the reader gets no real sense of combat, of being on the frontlines. Dos Passos is much more interested in looking at the interior lives of the 3 men more than having them displayed as chess pieces on the battlefield. The novel is a polemic on what Dos Passos sees as the futility and absurdity of the First World War. What's more, in France, he focuses more on telling Andrews' story, so much so that most of the book is taken up with him. I won't say much more, for fear of giving away the gist of the story.

But I will say that "THREE SOLDIERS" made for much better reading than "A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR", which I came to thoroughly hate for its verbosity and its main character's arrogance and pomposity.

[Tim Weakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first experience with Dos Passos and I am looking forward to reading 1919 now. It really reminded me of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, not in subject but in outlook and desperation of character. Each of the three soldiers ends up in his own desperate straits and finds their own way to a conclusion. What happens to them during the war and how their inner fortitude or lack of it help or hinder their progress makes for a heartbreaking story.

[Moshtagh hosein · Rating 3 out of 5]

سه سرباز یا (سه زن‌باز)
این کتاب تصویری بی‌رحمانه و صریح از هزینه‌های روانی و اجتماعی جنگ جهانی اول ارائه می‌دهد. دوس پاسوس با جان اندروز، کریسفیلد و فوزلی ، سرخوردگی، غیرانسانی شدن و مبارزه برای هویت فردی در برابر دستگاه سرکوبگر جنگ را می‌نمایاند. این رمان که در پی جنگ بزرگ نوشته شده، بازتاب‌دهنده شک‌وتردید فزاینده آن دوران نسبت به اقتدار نهادی و مفاهیم سنتی قهرمانی است و آن را به نقدی قدرتمند از جنگ و تأثیر آن بر روح انسانی تبدیل می‌کند.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this novel, based on the author's experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver in WWI, at grandmother's cottage in SW Michigan because I had been mightily impressed by his USA trilogy. Sadly, I was disappointed, but then it was only his second novel.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been listening to several John Dos Passos books recently. I am still waiting for one to really grab me like I had expected them to. They all seem somewhat dated and I wondered how they were when people read them at the time they were written. This book was published in 1921. Events in this book are during and just after World War One.

It is about American soldiers in France. None of the story actually happens in the trenches that are the famous WWI setting. In fact the armistice is about halfway through the book and the rest of the book is mostly about soldiers who remain in France as part of the occupation forces. It actually focuses on those who desert. It is a kind of war story that is completely new and unfamiliar to me.

The theme of the story seems to be about how army life and mentality destroy the lives of the men who find themselves in that circumstance. But it does not really tell that story in a particularly head-on way. At least that is my feeling having listen to it. It talks a lot about highway variety of men struggle with what to do with their lives interrupted by war and its aftermath. There are allusions to the possibility of revolution and a change in circumstances that will make life better.

One of the main characters in the book has a musical talent as a composer which seems so odd for someone who finds himself in listed as a doughboy in WW1.

The writing is skillful and yet I do not find it particularly motivating. It has been identified as a significant anti-war book but it seems to be more of a anti-social molding book. The struggle of men against the social system of the early 20th century that sent them off into the routinized world of the military. The image of the mindless marching legs appears several times. The life of being ordered about as a cog in the military machine.

[Adam Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Three Soldiers more like Three Pretentious Assholes. I realize that Dos Passos was giving his perspective of the war and his distaste for the military. The writing style was nicely portrayed but the characters were disappointing. I'm pretty sure that the only trees that Dos Passos is aware of are poplars. If there is ever a mention of the scenery, (and there are quite a few) he always mentions poplars. There could be a drinking game made out of it.

*Spoiler*

The book starts with the Italian kid from San Francisco, but I quickly realized that his only motive is to aspire to higher ranks. Who cares? As is expected, he gets passed over for his promotion and lives a dissatisfied career.

The second soldier is a son of a bitch. He's a murderer. He kills one of his own sergeants with a grenade as he's alone on the battlefield. He was my least favorite.

The third was the prissy coward who thought himself a slave. He was too good for doing physical work and being commanded. I'm glad he got his come-up-ins in the ends. He was so jaded and so much of the book dedicated to him that he was the main reason I didn't like the book.

All together, it was an uninteresting waste of time.

[VAHARAV · Rating 3 out of 5]

روزی را به یاد آورد که لخت وسط اتاق ایستاده بود و گروهبان سربازگیری اندازه اش میگرفت و معاینه‌اش میکرد، ناگهان دریافت زمانش را به یاد ندارد میتواند تنها یک سال پیش باشد؟ با این همه همین یک سال فاتحه ی تمام سالهای دیگر عمرش را خوانده بود. حالا اما زندگی را دوباره شروع می کند. دیگر از این فروتنی چاپلوسانه در برابر چیزهای بی ارزش رها میشود بی هیچ ملاحظه ای خودش خواهد بود.

« متن پشت کتاب »

+++++++++++++++++

تنها دلیل انتخاب این کتاب، تنها و تنها تجربه کردن دوباره حال و هوای جنگ جهانی دوم بود. اما چون داستان و روال تاثیرگذاری آن آنچنان نبود که می پنداشتم ، فلذا آن را از خودم دور کردم.


تاریخ پایان خوانش: پاییز ۱۴۰۱

[ANDREW CATALDO · Rating 4 out of 5]

The army is fuckeddddd

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Dos Passos' Three Soldiers was the first great American novel of the Great War, but it isn't actually about the war itself. There are no long descriptions of trench warfare or battles. Instead, it's about the men who stumble into the war -- searching for escape, or for direction, or for a career, or for adventure, or for an Ideal -- only to discover they had been sold a bill of goods. Instead of making the world safe for Democracy, they found themselves "slaves" in a mechanized system that trapped them, subjugated them, stole their youth (and their lives), and left them without direction or purpose. Despite the title, the novel focuses mainly on one solider, Andrews, a Harvard-educated musician who is obviously very much based on Dos Passos himself. We see him transform from idealistic young man to directionless deserter, disillusioned and lost as the war ends and he is still trapped in the "Army of Occupation," slaving for the financial interests of the country that has forgotten him and the men like him who never wanted to be long-term soldiers.

The novel has a stark ending, and it must have been powerful for readers in 1921 (especially veterans), as Dos Passos has soldiers expressing ideas that would have been considered treasonous and would have shocked those on the homefront who bought into idea of all-American doughboys fighting jauntily for Democracy and Freedom. I will admit that the novel has lost some of its bite in the intervening century, as Americans have gone through the Vietnam conflict, which brought all these realities into the open and changed how America views itself (and its military obsession) in a way that makes Dos Passos' novel seem a little tame in comparison. But we shouldn't fault Dos Passos for that. If anything, he looks ahead to a century in which America comes to realize that its reality doesn't match its rhetoric, and that our politicians continually misrepresent war to a population who buy into the propaganda, only to cut adrift those soldiers who do the dirty work.

Dos Passos' novel remains a touchstone for understanding Lost Generation pathos in the century where the United States would see both a meteoric rise in its military might and a searing self-reflection on the painful truths about its wartime atrocities on the road to becoming a superpower.

[Amin Houshmand · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب سه سرباز بر خلاف آنچیزی که در تبلیغات و حاشیه کتاب آمده، اصلاً کتابی ضدجنگ نیست. این کتاب تلاش می‌کند چهره‌ای میانه از جنگ ارائه کند و آنرا ابزاری برای رسیدن به اهداف شخصی نشان دهد. دوس پاسوس که خودش تجربه حضور در جنگ جهانی اول را به عنوان پزشک داشته، با آگاهی می‌داند که دارد از چه چیزی صحبت می‌کند. روایت سه سرباز از سه طبقه مختلف مردم ایالات متحده امریکا که همه‌شان بعد از نزاع‌های داخلی، بی هدف هستند. سه طبقه‌ای که هم بین‌شان عیاش هست، هم تحصیلکرده و هم سودجو. طبقه‌ای که به اجبار وارد ماشین جنگی شده‌اند و بدون هدف در حال رشد شخصیتی در این میانه هستند. ما در این کتاب هیچ چهره‌ای از جنگ و کراهت آن نمیبینیم. تنها چیزی که به خواننده منتقل می‌شود «نبودن دلیل» برای این کشتار است. سرباز امریکایی نمی‌داند چرا باید در حمایت از مردم فرانسه به جنگ قیصر آلمان برود. سرباز امریکایی می‌گوید این کشتار بدون هدف است، اگر هدف مشخصی به من بدهید، بیشتر خواهم کشت. «هر کسی که با این زبان - آلمان - صحبت می‌کردند را بکشید!» یا «کلاه‌خود آلمانی‌ها چجوریه؟ اونهارو تو فیلم دیدم!» یا «به ما گفتن میریم بجنگیم دنیا رو برای دموکراسی امن کنیم! دموکراسی! آره- دموکراسی اینه!». سرباز امریکایی مردم دنیا را بدون هویت می‌داند وقتی می‌گوید: «هر یک دقیقه یک هالو به دنیا می‌آد!» یا اصلا به تمدن و تاریخ بشری اعتقادی ندارد؛ «تمدن چیزی نبود جز بنای بزرگی از دروغ و جنگ - آدم‌ها وقتی همدیگر را می‌کشند انسان‌ترند تا وقتی از آن سخن می‌گویند». نویسنده اتفاقا دارد در این کتاب فردیت را معنا می‌کند. دارد تلاش می‌کند تا بوسیله ماشین جنگ، سربازان را رشد دهد و به چیزی که آرزویش را دارند برساند. «فاتحه فردیت خوانده شده بود! چه دیکتاتور از بالا برنده می‌شد چه سازمان خودانگیخته از پایین!». دوس پاسوس با آگاهی از شرایط اجتماعی و سیاسی ایالات متحده اتفاقا با قلم خودش خواسته مانیفستی را برای تبلیغ و معرفی فردگرایی و آزادی فردی و یا به بیان ساده‌تر زندگی لیبرالی عرضه کند. در میان هم ماشین جنگ می‌شود یک ابزار برای رشد و تعالی همان فرد مستاصل. خلاصه که کتاب «سه سرباز» نه تنها در تقبیح جنگ و ضدجنگ نیست، بلکه دارد به جنگ هدف می‌بخشد. هدفی فردی و برای رساندن خواننده به جامعه لیبرالیسم.

در انتها، این کتاب رو دوست داشتم، نه به خاطر تفکری که القا میکرد، یا نگاهش به جنگ، صرفاً به خاطر توانایی نویسنده در گفتن چیزی که بهش اعتقاد داشت.

[Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for "Three Soldiers", but I was mildly disappointed by it. This novel was written by John Dos Passos based on his own experience as a soldier in the First World War. It is the story of three soldiers in France during and immediately after the war who struggle with being soldiers in France. One of the soldiers serves relatively honorably in the trenches, one of them becomes a student at the Sorbonne on a soldiers' scholarship program, and one of the soldiers goes off the deep end and goes AWOL at a time when deserters could still be shot by their officers.

Overall I thought that "3 Soldiers" was a bit whiny. Granted that it's hard to judge the soldiers of the First World War who faced butchery in the trenches on a scale that has not been experienced before or since. But these soldiers had it relatively easy compared to soldiers in other World War I novels, especially "All Quiet on the Western Front". One of the soldiers got a free college education in a French university, with the only caveat that he continue wearing the uniform and check in with his American military officers. But he whined about this. Really? It seemed that the liberties granted to these soldiers only whetted their appetites for mischief. The end of the novel, where the one soldier ditched his uniform and went on the lam as an American in a France that was still largely occupied by the allies leaves the reader wondering what was he thinking? I suppose like most things about war, there really is not a happy ending here. Still, this is a particularly confusing and depressing novel.

Still, this novel may be interesting for readers who are interested in the experience of common soldiers in the First World War.

[Maxanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Dos Passos is considered by many to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre considered him the best. Passos is part of the "Lost Generation", the generation of young men (and writers) that grew up with World War I. Like Hemingway (at one time a close friend of Passos), he served in the ambulance corps during WWI. "Three Soldiers" is about WWI and paints the impact of the war in dark, despairing tones. Like an impressionist painter, the context is vividly draw while the characters and plot are always hovering in the shadows. There is no victory- or victor- only the somber destruction of the lives of men much too young to be lost. "Three Soldiers" is important for anyone studying either writers from the early 20th century- or most importantly- books that move the reader into the experience of WWI rather than just reading the "events" of this first Great War.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one just never made it for me. All of the action was in the first and last parts of the book with an endless boring section in the middle. The book focused on three soldier with the first part mostly featuring Fuselli then going with mostly Chrisfield and Andrews in the middle and eventually focusing on Andrews toward the last section. The book started off good describing young men anxious to join the army to fight in WWI hoping for glory like what they saw in the movies, but what they found was the dehumanizing treatment of military life. The book then drifted off into a, seemingly, pointless stretch of little interest until Andrews is caught to be out without a pass which led to disastrous results. Another factor that led to my disappointment in the book was the writing that I found was merely adequate.

[Chrissie]

*****************
One Man's Initiation: 1917 4 stars
Manhattan Transfer 1 star
Three Soldiers maybe

[Mark Fallon · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the great joys in my life are the friends who send me books. Thankful to my friend, Steve, for sending me this classic.

A peer of Hemingway and Faulkner, Dos Passos shares a story based on his own experience as an ambulance driver in World War I. The tone of his book is less like others in the Lost Generation, and more like Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O'Brien, veterans of wars that came after "the war to end all wars".

[Valentin Grevtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Очень сильное произведение. Мысленно я поставил этой книге 5 не дочитав даже до середины - на столько это было хорошо, испортить было просто уже невозможно.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hauntingly beautiful....this is not a thriller per se.....but I truly enjoyed it and the ending....blew me away.

[Rob Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

So fresh, so vivid. A masterpiece.

[Ppeva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Általában lusta vagyok ahhoz, hogy ennyire kibogarásszak, kivesézzek egy könyvet. Mindig úgy vagyok vele, hogy én jobban szeretek olvasni, mint írni. De most – még inkább, mint máskor – időm, mint a tenger. És fel is bosszantott kicsit ez a könyv, vagyis inkább a fordító.
Mert ezt a könyvet nem John Dos Passos írta ám, hanem Bartos Tibor. Ami nem lenne baj, ha saját neve alatt írna könyvet, de az nagyon nem tetszik, hogy átírja Dos Passos-t.* Miért nem elég jó neki?
Már a könyv elején felfigyeltem rá, hogy váratlanul fura szavak, szófordulatok bukkannak fel a szövegben, sokszor oda nem illően, kirívóan. Persze rögtön elindult bennem a kisördög, vajon hogy is lehetett ez eredetiben, angolul? Aztán legtöbbször győzött a lustaság. De egyszer aztán nem bírtam tovább, és megkerestem az eredetit.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6362/...
Nem volt könnyű kimazsolázni, mert a Gutenberg oldalon elég tagolatlan a szöveg, de akkor már felébredt bennem a kopó. :) És elkezdtem kigyűjteni a furaságokat magyarul, hozzánézve az eredetit. Hát, ég és föld. A fordító folyamatosan „szépített”, kevéssé vagy egyáltalán nem ismert régies és tájszavakkal fordított egyszerű angol szavakat, és helyenként egészen disszonáns volt az által keltett stílus az eredetihez képest.
A mondat, aminél átmentem nyomozó üzemmódban, ez volt:
„Végre látta, hogy Jeanne közeledik karcsún és feketén az ívfények alatt. Alig meglátta, rontott elébe.” (306. oldal) Mi az, hogy "alig meglátta, rontott elébe"?! Vajon angolul is döcögős nyelvtannal, fura szavakkal van? És itt az eredeti:
Then he saw Jeanne advancing across the ash-grey pavement of the square, slim and black under the arc lights. He ran to meet her.
Semmi "alig meglátta, semmi rontott elébe".
Visszanéztem a korábbi furcsaságokat is.
Miért "szentes" a forward house?
Vagy "rópatéglás meg vakolatdíszes kis házelők" a shabby little brick and plaster houses?
Hogy jön ide a "kapj már életmagra, pajtás!" meg az "elegem van a szájuk széléből"?!
Vagy "a nyelvem böstörő… Te nem vagy rottyul?"
Miért lesz a "stir"-ből kandargat?
A "sallow-faced clerks in uniform"-ból egyenruhába bújtatott tökmagszínű tintanyalók?
Az "In the neck"-ből A tökem (sic!) tele van vele.
Meg a "you could parley French real well"-ből jól parkírozol francul.
Vagy a "how long he had to wait"-ből mennyi időt kell még elvernie léccel.
Ja, és ha már kötekedek: szerintem van különbség az „Under the wheels” fejezetcím és a „Sínek között” -re fordítás között.
Sorolhatnám még tovább. De inkább beteszem majd a fordítás zónába, főként azért, mert nagyon bosszantottak, meg azért is, mert tanulságos. Számomra ezek a túlfordítás esetei, mikor a fordító az író elébe nyomakszik. Nem tetszik. Tudom, ha Dos Passos-t szeretném olvasni, olvassam angolul. De ha már le van fordítva, akkor én ragaszkodnék hozzá, hogy az eredetihez minél közelebbi művet olvashassak.
A könyv egyébként érdekes volt (bár örültem volna, ha nem kellett volna folyton nyelvészkedni benne, hanem kisiklások nélkül átadhattam volna magam a mondanivalónak). Tényleg egészen egyedi stílusú háborús regény. Katonából ugyan nem három volt benne, hanem sok, de még a főszereplők is többen voltak háromnál. Mire eldöntöttem volna magamban, ki is az a címszereplő három, már ejtette is egyiküket, és jött egy negyedik, ötödik, hatodik főbb szereplő. Aztán váratlanul megjelent valamelyik ejtett szereplő ismét.

*- Ehhez hasonló átiratot, igaz, még rosszabbat, olvastam már...

[☄ · Rating 3 out of 5]

hhhhh i'll probably come back and give this four stars later but three feels right for now!

the first third of this book is absolutely splendid. the opening scene? fabulous. the voyage across the atlantic, which so hauntingly mirrors cather's in one of ours? wow! i got jitters of excitement. unfortunately the book then proceeds to go completely off the rails after they arrive in france, which is truly, truly ironic :-)

i had a hunch we were going to be stuck with andrews for the larger portion of the book (since he's very clearly the dos passos stand-in) and i was a bit disappointed to find out i was right! crazy that we're glued to andy's despairing rhapsodizing hip when fuselli and chrisfield are right there, so flawed and ire-inducing but so wonderfully complex....!! we basically lose fuselli altogether after the first act which is such a shame because his story was substantial enough to have supported the entire book.... i would have loved to have seen a novel entirely dedicated to him, with chrisfield and andrews (or maybe just chris. andrews was a truly unnecessary addition to be honest LMAO) hovering around nearby as supporting cast. hm. anyway, dos passos wrote this when he was in his early twenties and still fairly fresh out of the war so i'll give him a pass.... also BOY it sure is hard to measure up to hemingway!

[William Haverinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is mostly about one World War 1 soldier, written in 1921. He is a Harvard grad, a musician, in the war as an enlisted man. There was less emphasis than I expected on the experiences in battle, but the chapters on the war were powerful. Three Soldiers is more about about the loss of freedom one experiences in the army, which brought back memories of my experience as a Vietnam era draftee. I guess when published the book was controversial in its realistic, non-romantic view of the common soldier's experience. It did not seem in the least controversial today.
Dos Passos was in the war himself after graduating from Harvard, so I suspect this is a very personal view of the war.