The Deer Hunter is a novelization

Novelization

A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...

 by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer E. M. Corder based upon the screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Deric Washburn

Deric Washburn

-Filmography:* Silent Running * The Deer Hunter * The Border * Extreme Prejudice -Awards:As a writer, Washburn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a WGA Award for "Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen" for The Deer Hunter, along with Quinn Redeker, Louis...

 and Michael Cimino

Michael Cimino

Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...

 of the 1978 war

War film

War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...

, a film that won five Academy Awards

Academy Awards

An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The novel is set in southern Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, in Pittsburgh and in working-class Clairton

Clairton, Pennsylvania

Clairton is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Monongahela River. It is part of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area. The population was 6,796 at the 2010 census. Under Pennsylvania legal classifications for local governments, Clairton is considered a third-class city...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, a Monongahela River

Monongahela River

The Monongahela River is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania in the United States...

 town south of Pittsburgh. The book follows a trio of Rusyn American

Rusyn American

Rusyn Americans are Americans whose ancestors were born in Carpathian Ruthenia. Some Rusyn Americans identify as Russian Americans or Ukrainian Americans.-History:...

 steel worker friends—Michael "Mike" Vronsky, Steven Pushkov, and Nikanor "Nick" Chevotarevich—both before and during their infantry service in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

.

The screenplay itself was loosely inspired by the German novel Three Comrades

Three Comrades (novel)

Three Comrades is a novel first published in 1936 by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. It is written in first person by the main character Robert Lohkamp, whose somewhat disillusioned outlook on life is due to his horrifying experiences in the trenches of the First World War's French-German...

(1937), by World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 veteran Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...

, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.The...

, which follows the lives of a trio of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 veterans in 1920s Weimar Germany

Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

.

The epigraph is from Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

:

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.