THE DAY OF THE BEAST

by Zane Grey

Lane, Maynard and Payson stand on deck as the ship glides toward New York, in the shadow of Liberty -- a war-weary trio of soldiers, home at last.
Time has marked them, and the battles of France have left them disabled . . . but what awaits them on land, beyond the empty dock? Who will be there for them, at home? And will they ever be able to lead a normal life? (non illustrated)

Genres: Westerns, Ebooks

112 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Pearl Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West. As of June 2007, the Internet Movie Database credits Grey with 110 films, one TV episode, and a series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater based loosely on his novels and short stories.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had never read a novel by Zane Grey, whom I thought wrote nothing but westerns. After reading a review of a biography of Grey and finding out that he also wrote this one about WWI, I thought I'd give it a try. It was fascinating in the sense that it was from the perspective of a young man who had been gassed in the war and had come home to his small midwestern town to die. What keeps him alive is the desire to end the licentiousness he finds among the youth of the town--underage drinking, petting in automobiles, gambling, and jazz dancing. His own sister who is only 15 is among the greatest offenders. He is able to help a few young people go on the straight and narrow, but at great cost to himself. The writing is often over the top (no pun intended) as he bemoans the youth of today. Quite the curiosity.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

An attempt at a “serious novel” by the famed novelist of the west, this turns out to be quite the hot mess. Hero has returned from WWI and is not expected to live very long. (Neither are his two friends.) Maybe it is just as well — the women (very young women like 15-16 or so) have all bobbed their hair, hiked up their skirts, done vulgar dances, and listened to some of that satanic jazz. What men have any money? The people who didn’t serve; the people who dodged the draft; people with connections. Meanwhile people like our hero, coughing out their lungs because they were gassed, twisted in body (and maybe in mind as well), suffer, complain, and slowly die.

I won’t do a spoiler and reveal the ending. There is no way to see it coming because it is shockingly repellent. But not in a good way. The rest is textbook bad novel — with unfinished plot threads, intolerable characters and a moral sense suggesting a preacher having a toot on bad moonshine. Still, this is interesting as an early version of the embittered GI returns home genre.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, I didn't know before this book that it's not a western so if that's what you want steer clear. Second, it is an interesting look at how things changed culturally/morally between WWI and when soldiers came home after the war which is an aspect I never thought of before. Third, it SO DEPRESSING. Seriously the book COULD have had a happy ending & I thought it would for awhile til the very end where he throws it on you and you cry from shock. I'm rewriting the ending for my own sake & will leave this book alone henceforth. It's well written, I just hate depressing books (also, his moral commentary rings false given his own life choices, but the novel still affords an interesting vantage point)

[Leo Meddings]

I had read all of Zane Grey except this one and thus chose it to finish Zane Grey. I wish I had not because I did not like the ending. It looked like the main character was finally going to be happy with his life and his new loving wife Mel. Then he suddenly declares to her that they could never be happy because he was jealous of her having had a war-baby with someone else and dies.

Zane Grey continues to be very descriptive of all the surroundings and action. He uses several different words that I had to look up. For example instead of saying twilight, it says gloaming which I never saw before even though I have read thousands of books.

I enjoyed the book until it suddenly ended.

[Gerald Matzke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite different from most of the other stories by Zane Grey. It tells the story of a soldier who returns home from WW I to find that everything has changed. His war injuries complicate his transition to civilian life. He holds a grudge against those who did not go to fight like he did. Those bad feelings further make it difficult to move on with his life. In his typical fashion, Grey takes great pains to describe no only the scenery but in the story he vividly describes the mental state of his main character. At times the story gets exciting and you want to keep reading. At other times you wish that he would stop being so descriptive and move the story along.

[John Lietzke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review of "The Day of the Beast" by John Lietzke

I rated this book with one star because I do not like reading stories about disabled vets retuning home after a war. Even though I only read three chapters, I determined the story takes place after World War I. I like to read westerns, mysteries and thrillers.

[gerald takala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depression on paper

The worst story of Grey's that I have ever read. If he was alive I would prescribe him prozac. I cannot fathom how bleak his view of society was He had an unrealistic view of women and human nature with a very prudish comprehension of love and relationships do yourself a favor and skip this one.

[maggie rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good adventure book to read on rainy day

I would recommend this book to anyone man or woman who enjoys a good western adventure once in a while.

[John R. Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it very interesting all though a little disjointed.

[Long Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

No one comes home from war unchanged. Classic story of “Times change, people don’t”. Enjoyed the read but definitely not typical Zane Grey.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a banned book by today’s standards. It didn’t hold my interest.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have loved Zane Grey’s westerns. This is just self-righteous crap, as told by a teetotaler. Grey’s politics are always part of the plot. In this case, it doesn't help the story at all.

[Pat Ison Saylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zane Grey's Best

I have been a long time reader of Zane Grey. How I missed this book I don't know. This is not a western which is why I overlook it. Strong characters, great storyline. A great perspective of American after WWI.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zane grey wrote Westerns, right?

He did, lots of them in fact; but he also wrote a few books on other subjects too, like baseball, fishing and hunting. Compared to his work as a whole though the most unrepresentative novel he ever wrote may well have been this one.

The Day of the Beast is the story of Daren Lane and hundreds of thousands like him in the years immediately after the conclusion of WWI, disabled soldiers returning home to an America that simply didn't want to be reminded of what just took place.

This passage from the first chapter in which Lane and his two buddies first step off the boat back is neatly indicative of the lack of sympathy and respect they are about to encounter even in their hometown:

'When the three disabled soldiers, the last passengers to disembark, slowly and laboriously descended to the wharf, no one offered to help them, no one waited with a smile and hand-clasp of welcome. No one saw them, except a burly policeman, who evidently had charge of the traffic at the door. He poked his club into the ribs of the one-legged, slowly shuffling Maynard and said with cheerful gruffness: "Step lively, Buddy, step lively!"

What follows after Lane and Maynard get home is nearly so simply and neatly done, however, being something of a conflicted and overwrought mess. A brave and interesting mess, but still a mess.

Lane soon discovers that the girl he was engaged to has broken it off and brazenly dances with other men in front of him, the little sister he adored has become a wanton flirt who speaks in the most atrocious slang (which has dated badly and doesn't even sound convincing for the time it was written.)

Though only away for three years, Lane finds himself completely out of step with postwar America. Still in his early twenties he came across as closer in age to a pensioner, disgusted with the moral decline typified by short skirts and jazz.

I had a real hard time reconciling Lane's fogeyish attitude with his youngish age, but then I tried to imagine a GI leaving for Vietnam in 1964 and returning in 1967 and I decided that perhaps social mores in America could have changed so dramatically between 1916 and 1919 after all?

The depth of his anger only really makes sense as something magnified by the bitterness of his injuries, which to give Grey his due certainly didn't ignore:

'He knew he had become morbid, sick, rancorous, base, obsessed with this iniquity and his passion to stamp on it, as if it were a venomous serpent.'

Just as importantly there really are some bad people in his town. Lane spies on a group of young men calling themselves the Strong-Arm Gang who use their hideout to groom and rape teenage girls. He batters the two leaders and the law looks the other way, yet because of the worst of the gang is left unprosecuted and remains free to marry Maynard's sister!

Grey seemed to be unaware of the issues caused by his character's vigilantism. I'm afraid to say that the impression he gave me was that the teenage girls didn't deserve the right kind of justice because they all knew what they were doing and had it coming to them.

Again, a Travis Bickle style vigilante can get away with feeling like that because he never once holds the audience's full sympathy, but it's clear in this story that Lane, though twisted and angry, is in the right.

In his defence there are instances where Grey's take on the returning soldier are a little more nuanced than the areas I have picked out, and as previously stated this is a good piece of social criticism for the time, especially for a writer of Westerns frequently criticised for his romanticism.

But morally it's a mess.

[Russell G Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

War and it's terrible cost to man are brought forth in Grey's account

Plainly showing that " Love thy neighbor as the best way to
Live in America or any nation on earth.

[Sonal Panse · Rating 2 out of 5]

From a promising beginning - how war-damaged soldiers discover that they were nothing but cannon fodder, fighting for nothing, and how a fickle society moves on and wants to forget about them - this book descends into a pompous lecture in morality - and an asinine morality, of course, that expects women to stifle themselves in order to perch on the idealistic pedestal dreamed up by a patriarchal moron.

Zane Grey, given the colorful way in which he led his own personal life, was one hell of a hypocrite to pile this drivel on the reader.

The one additional star is for the nature descriptions.

[Bob Rivera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as part of the Zane Grey Megapack, the story is about the return of a WWI soldier to the United States. He suffers from what we would now know as PTSD, and must deal with deep illness from his service. In addition, he struggles with the changes that have occured, societally in his home town. Written in 1922, the story resembles what our Viet Nam veteran's must have endured when they returned home. One of Zane Grey's more tragic stories.

[Tim Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great glimpse into changing culture at the end of WWII.

[Ladislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smutný pohľad na dôsledky vojen.