War has been a mainstay of human civilization since its inception thousands of years ago, and throughout this long and colorful history, warriors have almost exclusively been male. By repeatedly taking on the fundamentally aggressive and violent role of soldier, Man has slowly come to define Himself through these violent experiences. Although modern American society regulates the experiences associated with engaging in warfare to a select group of individuals, leaving the majority of the American public emotionally and personally distant from war, mainstream American masculinity still draws heavily upon the characteristically male experience of going to war. In modern American society, masculinity is still defined and expressed through analogy with the behavior and experiences of men at war; however, such a simplistic masculinity cannot account for the depth of human experience embraced by a modern man.
Whether engaging in European trench warfare or fighting through the jungles of Vietnam, a soldier must learn to cope with the incredible mental stress brought on by the ever-present threat of a grisly death. The physical stress introduced by poor nutrition, a harsh and hostile environment, and the cumulative physical effect of emotional trauma only serves to make a trying situation even more taxing. It is out of this violently stressful environment that the coping mechanisms that characterize wartime masculinity arise.
A natural response to such a violent environment is to simply behave in a way that portrays no weakness. If the soldier does not show any signs of weakness, he finds it much easier to convince himself that he can survive by his strength. In asserting his control over himself by hiding all of his weaknesses, h...
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...y and war still abound; however, these analogies cannot capture the full masculinity of the modern man as they do not allow for the formation of intimate personal relationships, such as that between husband and wife, which lie at the heart of ordinary civilian life.
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They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” The moved like mules carrying the weight of the Vietnam war. They tried to justify their actions during this time. The soldiers tried to rationalize their inhumanity brought about by war.
The very first thing that should be mentioned when talking about the effect of war on a soldier’s psyche is the notion
Everybody has to deal with adversity at some point in their lives. The adversity that they go through varies from person to person. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he had to make it through the Vietnam War alive. In the short story, "The Things They Carried," where Cross draws his strength from is somewhat unclear. He seems strong at the beginning of the story, but then again, he also seems to be gaining strength towards the end of the story. This paper shows two different points of view. It discusses whether Jimmy Cross is a stronger person at the beginning of the story or at the end of the story.
The themes that are found are friendship, camaraderie and belonging. While these themes are greatly seen throughout Band of Brothers, it also adds into the idea of masculinity. This is achieved in scenes throughout the miniseries that deal with combat, rescuing, and ultimately sacrifice. With these themes it allows the idea of “brotherhood” to go beyond someone’s ethnicity. One connection with masculinity is military service, and with this it connects to the larger idea of brotherhood. Nancy Ehrenreich further reinforces this idea, “Military service is one of our rites of manhood; it makes men, men. And war makes nations masculine, too. It creates and reinforces a masculine national identity-a sense that our nation is strong, determined, decisive, brave, proud, and so on.” This claim it further emphasizes the overall idea of masculinity, and the idea of brotherhood. This idea of masculinity can help the United States government because with the draft not being in use, they have to relay on recruits enlisting voluntarily. Ehrenreich also provides characteristics of masculinity throughout her article. To be a seen as a "real" man, a male cannot be fearful, indecisive, conciliatory or weak. He needs to be willing to use force or sacrifice his own life for his country, and he will not surrender. Band of Brothers has these characteristics of being masculine throughout the miniseries, and these images are then used to construct the image of “brotherhood.” Powerful images that were displayed in Band of Brothers that displays the notion of masculinity can be displayed throughout episode six in the miniseries. During this episode the men were surrounded by the Germans and were heavily undersupplied. Despite being undersupplied the men refused to leave the line, and the 101st Airborne thought it would be appalling to surrender.
I think every man between 20 and 40 needs to read Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Last American Man". Without going into details (like I said, you should read the book), this is a biography/profile of Eustace Conway - a man who is, among other things, capable of and prefers to (or would prefer to) live the kind of frontier lifestyle we have read about: hunting and gathering his food, living in a house he built using his own hands, making his own clothes from the skins of animals he captured, etc. I suspect that for many people the story, at least initially, will arouse the sort of Romantic feelings that tend to come with fantasies of a "simple life" of rugged self-sufficiency. However, even for those who are quite certain that they prefer their modern urban lifestyle (air conditioning, direct deposit, grocery stores, ebay, cable TV, &c.), I think this book raises fundamental questions about what it means to be a man at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Mosse, L George. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York: Macmillan publishers, 1996.
Throughout history, time has created and shaped the ideal type of men, while society chooses what it means to be a real man..The ideal real men needed to be strong, provider of his family, decision maker, economically, educationally, physically, and politically dominant (Myers). The difference between the masculinity of the 20th century and the 21st has changed significantly. The ideal men status in 1900’s was rich, educated, powerful, and successful. In today’s perspectives, men needs to be strong, tall, handsome, capable, and unemotional. The contrast of these two centuries are mostly about men’s social status and appearances. Before, it was all about what a man is capable of doing and how powerful he could be compared to today’s ideal,
he views of masculinity have been ever changing in the past hundreds of years. At the beginning of the twentieth century when it came time for Canadians to World War One the government and recruitment officers took the approach of gender stereotypes to influence men to join up. “The war played an important role in the construction of gender, and the social roles of men and women” and the recruitment efforts of World War One used this to their advantage . Men were portrayed as tough, strong, and capable of defending the country. These beliefs were shown though the use of propaganda and other forms of recruitment efforts that were significant to gender dimension and notions of a man.
In World War One there are many young soldiers who have never had a chance to live their lives. The soldiers want to survive so they can finally get an opportunity to live their lives as the young boys they are truly. In order to do so they all plan their future. They want a goal to strive for to try and remain themselves. They plan for when they are free and unharmed by the heartwarming war. Paul, Müller, Kropp, Kat, and Haie go back and forth on what they want life to be like. All the men agree on one perfect image. “Everyone is silent. The picture is too good” (Remarque 78). Every man knows what they want and why they want it. Although men have
However, in times of war, these ideals are reinforced as women's bodies become the symbolic terrain of male competition whilst qualities of power and violence associated with hegemonic masculinity construct and define male gendered roles and behaviours.
... could not help themselves, they were not going to be helped. If struggle were encountered, men had personalized ways to reconnect with the real world, and if a tragedy were encountered which affected the entire company, they also found a combined way to cope with this pressure. The priorities of men during the war shifted greatly toward emotional connections to people and events other than the war, and it was these connections that helped them survive and return home. Coping with the stress and burden of war is not an easy task for anyone, yet in The Things they Carried, O'Brien depicts men dealing and coping as much as they can, using only their primeval resources. They learn how to cope with the barest necessities in life, and they learn how to make use of the smallest opportunities to obtain the most relief and joy from every moment in life.
Soldiers are following in the paths of their ancestors even in modern day war as they march into the lifestyle of insanity or death if they are one of the lucky few. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” and in multiple war time poems, the reality and horrors that many soldiers live on a regular day basis are developed through the paths that men go through in war year after year.
The Great War, as World War I is often referred to, as promising a chance for young men to become, heroes. However, the reality of conflict harshly ruined this vision. Men were sent into muddy trenches where they anticipated death for weeks and months at a time. With the endless shelling saw even the most enduring soldiers worn down to insanity. The soldiers in Regeneration are characterized as being no different to the women with in the patriarchal society as men where reliant on orders from their leaders, soldiers therefore came to personify the submissive role that women had long been forced to oppress in patriarchal societies like that of early 20th century England. In Regeneration, Dr. Rivers connects war neuroses to the hysteria that often disturbed the women during this time; trenches diminished the men to be powerless, while strictly forbidden social roles have had the same effect on women. In both cases, these prolonged positions of involuntary obligation play a large role in triggering
Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.
Sex and gender are attributes to our identity. Sex describes the physical and biological factors we are born with, for example male or female genitalia, as quoted from blackadder “A boy without a winkle is a girl” (Elton and Curtis 1998). Whether we have oestrogen or testosterone hormones also tells us if we are man or woman. Gender however is in relation to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and expectations of what characteristics men or women should portray. Anyone given the opportunity to describe men, they would say words like dominant, non emotional, macho, aggressive, and to be the provider and protector of his family. This essay sets out to examine if masculinity is socially constructed and to do this the theories of gender, media, historical societies and even sexuality will be analysed throughout.