The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.

It is a well known fact that experiencing war changes people; there is an innocence that is forever lost. In Tim O’Brian’s, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Mary Anne Bell is an unusual example of the innocence that is lost in war because unlike the rest of the soldiers, she is a woman. Mary Anne’s transformation from innocent “sweetheart” to fierce warrior left readers with mixed emotions because although Mary Anne felt at peace with her transformation, she was also disconnected from reality.

War is often misinterpreted as an exciting occurrence filled with glory and acts of terrific heroism. In reality, it is brutal and serves as an effective simulation of hell. Timothy Findley's The Wars depicts an inhumane world where individuals are taken out of their elements and are forced to struggle to hold onto their humanity amidst the horrors. The lack of rules in war targets and destroys every aspect of what it means to be human. It heavily interferes with one's motivations, desires and purpose of living. The war also targets one's innocence and brings about suffering both physically and mentally.

In the chapter titled “History” within the book called The Second Sex, Beauvoir talks about various of events and changes along with encounters that provided opportunities to seize greater freedom for women as a collectivity. For instance, when women were able to leave their homes and actually take an outside job, it allowed women a bit confused as to what roles she needed to partake in. Given that men were always gender-policing women to fit the ideal role, the women found it difficult to transitions and thus loose a sense of self along the way. De Beauvoir also states that gainful employment can stop the cycle of dependency on man and thus allow the two genders men and women to see each other’s as equals. It is within the book The Second Sex that De Beauvoir tries to understand the imbalance of gender roles to help her understand this she turns to the biology, psychoanalyst and the historical materialism. In her findings, she reveals that although there are some physical differences between women and men there is no proven facts that women cant do the same task as men in a workforce.

The glorified act of war is often staged in historical literature by idolizing the soldiers who partake in the event. Soldiers are made to seem intrepid, ruthless and muscular, each with a ceaseless desire to fight valiantly for their countries. Timothy Findley and Kurt Vonnegut discard this typical hero archetype in their anti-war novels by portraying the soldiers who fight in the war as the men they are, not as the templates of heroes they are expected to fit, in furtherance of strengthening their anti-war stances. Findley and Vonnegut illustrate their protagonists as a tragic hero and an anti-hero, respectively, in order to juxtapose the atrocities of war with the flawed humanness of man and to challenge the stereotypical image of a

Archetypal within The Wars Archetypal is known as recurring patterns in literature, provided in Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars. Timothy Findley was born in 1930, he was a phenomenal writer, and was a Canadian novelist and playwright The content exhibits the war that has been continuing for a considerable length of time, leaving a scar in history that continues rehashing itself. Many individuals across the world are fighting for: freedom, religious beliefs and mostly for their children’s future. In this text, Findley gives the readers a perspective on World War One and the effects it had throughout the text.

In the beginning of the 20th century, as European countries were getting ready for war, people were rushing to sign up in what is now known as the Great War. The thought of war used to be romanticized by many because of how imperialists were able to win battles and take over so easily with their technological advances. Men thought they could go off, make a name for themselves, and then return home safely to their families; it was the ultimate romantic adventure. However, they soon found out that wasn’t the case. The war turned out to be one of the most tragic, all consuming wars in history of worldwide conflicts. The novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, depicts the lives of soldiers in trench warfare who, even though may have escaped shells, welre ultimately destroyed by the war.

More often than not, war novels romanticize the soldier on the battle field as a heroic figure that would gladly die for his county’s honor. Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”, paints a vividly different picture than one of a patriotic soldier willing to be at war. Remarque’s work masterfully shows that the soldier’s expectations of war could not be any further from society’s concept of warfare. “All Quiet on the Western Front” follows a young and innocent soldier, Paul Baumer, through the living Hell that is World War I. Through Paul’s character, Remarque’s antiwar novel demonstrates that war is nothing but, irrational, patriotic fueled violence that turns humans into insensible soldiers, while simultaneously indicating that their lives have no meaning.

A large proportion of Great War literature suggests that men were socially seen as the superior gender but women were given opportunities to prove themselves in a male-dominated society as a by-product of war. This essay will compare the issues of gender identity and roles at the front line in R.C Sheriffs ‘Journeys End’ and the impact war had on women who stayed home in Accrington, seen in Peter Whelan’s ‘The Accrington Pals’ during 1914 and 1918.

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1949 text The Second Sex, examines the problems faced by women in Western society. She argues that women are subjugated, oppressed, and made to be inferior to males – simply by virtue of the fact that they are women. She notes that men define their own world, and women are merely meant to live in it. She sees women as unable to change the world like men can, unable to live their lives freely as men can, and, tragically, mostly unaware of their own oppression. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir describes the subjugation of woman, defines a method for her liberation, and recommends strategies for this liberation that still have not been implemented today.

In the chapter of her book The Second Sex entitled “the Woman in Love,” Simone de Beauvoir characterizes the romantic ideal of the relationship with a man as a woman’s purpose as a form of self-deception (translated here as “bad faith”). The self-deception de Beauvoir describes is based in the thesis of The Second Sex. This is the idea that women have been deceived into believing that they are second-class humans. Western culture, according to de Beauvoir, teaches us that women are missing some elusive element of the self that endows men with freedom- a concept essential to the existentialist definition of the conscious being. Therefore, a woman can never find fulfillment as a thinking person as

The following text comes from Simone de Beauvoir called “The Second Sex,” which discusses the ideas of the feminist

De Beauvoir’s “Woman as Other” lays out an elaborate argument on gender inequality; using the term “other” to establish woman’s alternate, lesser important role throughout her work, the author dissects and examines from its origin the female’s secondary position in society in contrast to man. Indeed, from the beginning of recorded history, the duality of man, by definition, positions woman at the opposing end of the spectrum in relation to her male counterpart. Even by today’s modern and accepting standards, the female suffers under the brand of being the sub-standard half of the duality equation; compared to her male opponent, women are paid lower wages, have fewer and limited expression of rights, achieve lower

Lastly, “femininity” refers to behavioural activities or interests that are assigned to the female sex, such as cleaning and cooking (Beauvoir, 617). Although many critics have read her text and become confused due to her stylistic choice to fuse her voice with the voices of famous men, it can be said that the text ultimately leads the reader to begin to question what society sees as a woman (Zerilli, 1-2). Despite Beauvoir’s The Second Sex appearing to recognize the oppression of women throughout the world without giving an actual solution, I will argue that Beauvoir’s evaluation of each “natural” aspect of female oppression allows readers to recognize that the only thing holding themselves back as a woman is society’s unnatural definition of their body, relation to men, and personal freedoms. Of course, when it comes to one's freedom, it is difficult to obtain when your body feels like a