Masculinity, By William Faulkner And The Death Of A Man

One of the most important themes, masculinity, is portrayed directly at the start of Hemingway's short story collection starting with "Indian Camp." In the first short story the reader sees the novels protagonist, Nick Adams', "response to violence and suffering inflicted on others will ultimately define his own sense of masculinity" (Frazier). Witnessing this dramatic event at such a young age will define Nick's life and change the way he views certain aspects of life just from watching a woman give birth. Nick's maturity and responsibility are also themes that are greatly exploited just as well as his masculinity.

In life, sometimes men act fearless and manly in order to impress the girl to win her over with his masculinity. But what type of machismo attracts woman, the external or internal manliness? Apparently neither method works in the case of Brett in The Sun Also Rises where both Cohn and Jake reflect the two different aspects of this masculinity. Hemingway does have an attitude on which one is preferable, but alas neither of them gets the girl at the end. Throughout the novel, Hemingway creates a negative tone towards Cohn’s external manhood and a positive tone towards Jake internal manhood.

The definition of masculinity; Is the fact of being a man or having qualities considered typical of a man.

19th century America was a time period in which the definition of masculinity grew through a man’s power and work. To be considered as “that man”, what was needed was power, wealth, and even the appearance of a man himself. It was often times violent in the battle for who was the “manlier man”, as it related to the real world of Twain’s 19th century. Masculinity was a way for these men to create dominance and get their way throughout duels and even bargaining. Twain’s view on 19th century America can be of comparison to Arthurian England with the comparison of a King and the lower man. Twain builds on the world that men have come to think that doing one bad thing, is even good for their wellbeing, and to hold that masculine image.

In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, characterization, specifically through the multitude of narrators, transforms an otherwise pedestrian plot into a complex pilgrimage to the truth. As I Lay Dying is told from the perspective of fifteen different characters in 59 chapters (Tuck 35). Nearly half (7) of the characters from whose perspective the story is narrated are members of the same family, the Bundrens. The other characters are onlookers of the Bundrens’ journey to bury their mother, Addie. Each character responds to the events that are unfolding in a unique way and his or her reactions help to characterize themselves and others.

At the break of the day I wake up before the sun has even settled itself back into the sky, I repeat my dreary morning routine, and I go somewhere. I go somewhere by myself, quite alone, maybe in my car, maybe just for a walk around the neighborhood. While I’m out on my walk or after I’ve driven somewhere and gotten out of my car (that seriously needs a run through the car wash), I become aware. I become vividly aware of all the people around me and feel unsafe, I feel unsafe in my own neighborhood because I heard a woman was held at gunpoint not far from here, I feel unsafe because I’ve binge watched Criminal Minds and I know how easy it is for unsuspecting women who feel safe in public, at stores and in parking lots, to be abducted.

The youthful protagonists of The Unvanquished and "Barn Burning," Bayard Sartoris and Sarty Snopes respectively, offer through their experiences and, most importantly, the way their stories are told, telling insights about the constructions of southern masculinities with respect to class. The relative innocence that each of the boys has in common, though ultimately loses, provides a record of sorts to the formation of the impressions that shape their young lives and their early conceptions of what it means to be a man. Through narrative artifice, Faulkner is able to make observations, apt but at times scathing, about these constructions of southern masculinity as

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end” (Faulkner 35). In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner captures the reader with reality in a perplexing and unequivocal portrayal of a Mississippi family. Born in Mississippi, Faulkner’s expertise in innovative techniques of language qualified him for his accomplishments in the Nobel Prize for Literature (1949), the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1955 & 1963), and the National Book Award (1951 & 1955) (William Faulkner Biography). Although referred to by some critics as a simple novel, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying uses technical innovations that are compelling and captivating. The novel is not just a story about family, but a story that shows how people within the same family grieve differently.

The setting in which the story takes place emphasizes the relationship of the man and the woman in the story. Hemingway writes:

In this short story by J.D. Salinger, masculinity with war time behavior is embodied through Franklin Graff’s life. During this time period any man away at war is considered a real man. Franklin is not able to become a soldier due to a bad heart. This results in him being flirted with from the same sex and losing the special girl in his life. He now struggles with being emasculated in his every day activities and lifestyle.

It’s a hard time to be male in America and that fact alone should make everyone want to change it. In the Ted Talk “The Mask of Masculinity” by Connor Beaton, he described how men are faced with many challenges throughout their whole life. This includes being taught not to have emotion and that their highest value in life is to have dominance and control. If they portray any kind of feminine traits like singing, dancing or love, they are automatically not a real man anymore. Beaton claims that the biggest challenge men face is, “. . . being able to overcome and move through some of the negative stereotypes that surround masculinity.” The biggest problem today is that men think in order to succeed in life, they have to be in total control and

The matador is a figure both of masculinity in his strength and gender, and femininity in his passivity, dress, and manipulation of desire. The passivity of the feminized matador “becomes her strength … against the man who goes ‘straight to the point’” (Schwartz 65). This question of “going straight to the point” is questioned in the text and is analogous to the loudness and failed performances of masculinity and men like Cohn are further likened to a bull. While figures of androgyny exercise great power in the book and failed male figures, the bulls and the men Brett controls fall to the figure of androgyny, Hemingway complicates the power of the androgynous figure through his masculine figure, Jake. Jake in unable to go “straight to the point” as he is impotent. Instead Jake’s position involves a triangulation of the desire manipulated in a bullfight and he represents an observer. He both observes the object of his affection Brett manipulate the desires of men and he watches the figure of a matador manipulate the desires of the bull, suggesting a

Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises has his male characters struggling with what it means to be a man in the post-war world. With this struggle one the major themes in the novel emits, masculine identity. Many of these “Lost Generation” men returned from that war in dissatisfaction with their life, the main characters of Hemingway’s novel are found among them. His main characters find themselves drifting, roaming around France and Spain, at a loss for something meaningful in their lives. The characters relate to each other in completely shallow ways, often ambiguously saying one thing, while meaning another. The Sun Also Rises first person narration offers few clues to the real meaning of his characters’ interactions with each other. The

The characters in Hemingway’s stories reveal much about how he feels about men and the role they should play in society. Most of Hemingway’s male characters can be split into one of two groups. The first of which is the “Code” Hero. This is the tough, macho guy who chooses to live his life by following a “code of

In the short story “Indian Camp”, by Ernest Hemingway, many controversies arise about the idea of feminism in the text. Feminism is a general term used to describe advocating women’s rights socially, politically, and making equal rights to those of men. Feminist criticism is looked through a “lens” along the line of gender roles in literature, the value of female characters within the text, and interpreting the perspective from which the text is written. Many of Hemingway’s female characters display anti-feminist attributes due to the role that women play or how they are referred to within a text by him or other characters. There are many assumptions that go along with the