Men Are Ticking Time Bombs

Men Are Ticking Time Bombs

“I sn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different…” A pretty face will age, a perfect body will change and likewise “a man” will change with time. Age is something that time has brought upon us, be it a woman or a man, the development of individuals over time has always enthralled me. Lately, in pursuit of answers myself I came across a piece of literary work Summer of the Seventeenth doll. A pioneering play of the 1950’s written by Ray Lawler which encapsulates the ideals of masculinity and its changing form. The story revolves around the seventeenth mark of an annual tradition wherein two masculine sugarcane cutters, Barney Ibbot and Roo Webber, travel south to

Olive is seen as a thirty-nine-year-old who has a youthful optimism that tends to lead towards naivety. She defines her ideal man as being strong, carefree and confident. Yet the play is quite controversial in that we see Lawler present Roo and Barney the main male characters with fading images of these masculine traits as the effects of time and age come into play.

People in our modern society, including myself, see themselves characterising men’s masculinity as a mere creation of their look. Isn’t it true we all want a man who has the cliché image of being tall, built and strong? But what most people overlook is that in the home run these masculine traits disappear and these defining stereotypes only exist for a short period of time.

As seen with Roo a forty-one-year-old, “sugar cane canecutter,” who is well esteemed as a ganger and respectable at his job, but who is now slowing with age. For the last sixteen layoff seasons, he’s been coming down as the macho man of the lead but a twist of fate shows Roo being no longer the strongest, no longer the “big man,” but rather a man with a crumpled, weak masculine image. As simple as a “[strained] back” took him off the top and crashing to the bottom. Is it ironic that such as small thing could make such as difference? By Lawler’s portrayal of masculinity in a way, we are positioned to see being the strongest or the toughest is just a temporary basis and giving importance

Yet, Lawler presents Roo in such that he is grappling to retain his masculinity. He is no longer the strongest, no longer carefree and the arrival of Johnnie Dowd meant he was no longer confidence. Young Dowd a twenty-five-year-old stronger, faster canecutter taken on by Roo as part of his gang was momentously enough to contribute to Roo’s already sinking masculinity. It is seen as being the last straw to Roo ever-present past and his lost youth. As we see Roo reveal to Barney he could not handle Dowd doing “better job than [him] and [he] just wasn’t man enough to take it.” Such contrasting statements make it clear for the audience that masculinity is weakened by age and what defines a man in their youthful years cannot be the same as time and circumstances