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Sexuality and literature
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Sexuality and literature
Female sexual roles in literature
Homosexuality in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the poem “rifle,” Rudy Fransisco utilizes a unifying metaphor and juxtaposition to shed light on how weapons can be recast from harmful to harmonious. This poem also emphasizes the theme of masculinity, and how men are afraid to be vulnerable, so they attempt to be masculine by becoming weapons themselves. Throughout this poem, juxtaposition is continuously used to compare how weapons are being converted into musical instruments (5-6). This displays to the reader that something that was once used to take many lives is changing into something that is used to bring joy to both people and communities. The conversion of the weapons exposes a hopeful tone by showing what they will become.
In “The Man I Killed,” Tim O’Brien portrays a vivid story on how war affects individuals. Tim, Azar, and Kiowa are all at the Vietnam war in 1990 together fighting. Tim killed a man with a grenade and he feels deeply upset about the matter, while Azar shows no sympathy for the dead man whatsoever. Kiowa is the neutral man of the situation, trying to comfort and justify the death of the man because it was Tim’s job to protect his men. The story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, while O’Brien uses a sufficient amount of imagery throughout the reading to show the amount of guilt he has obtained from killing a man.
The poem “Facing it” by Yusef Komunyakaa is a deep poem that shows the aftereffects of war in modern society. The article called: “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Among Vietnam Veterans”, by Robinowitz and Walter Penk shows the cultural context we need to understand about soldiers after the Vietnam War. By analyzing the article and the poem together we will discover the full cultural context and meaning behind the poem. The message of the poem is that PTSD is a serious issue that has been ignored for far too long, and now is the time to consider those who fought for us.
Men went through so many tasks during the Vietnam War physically and mentally. The beginning chapters focus on training for war and being prepared for the worst. For example, when there is a sergeant in a room with the marines. The sergeant walks to the chalk board and writes “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN” (36-37). The
Family in society is usually shown as a close group of people who truly and deeply care for each other, where their bond is built through trust and love. In most aspects, family is believed to have positive impacts and help in many ways. However, Richard Wagamese's novel Indian Horse, truly has a heavy portrayal of family as a theme with unfortunately negative impacts, however some are still positive. It has affected Saul Indian Horse, the main character within his identity through his experiences. Family ties, whether it was a caring and nurturing connection or a strained and troubled connection, played a very pivotal role throughout Saul's trauma, cultural loss, and healing.
In some aspects the military can be said to be an end in itself but the author has failed to address its primary role as servant to the ruling interests. Though the book has some lacunas but it cannot be denied that Kathleen Barry has done a pioneering work on the concept of empathy which is the most important trait in all human beings. It also needs to be inculcated in the soldiers on the battlefield also so that they can effectively differentiate between right and wrong. The book provides a fresh and broad reaching critique of militarised masculinity.
Rambo: First Blood by Ted Kotcheff was one of the most influential films of its day. On the surface, it’s an epic wilderness showdown, but underneath the layers of action and suspense resides an author’s purpose that confronts the manipulation and rejection faced by returning Vietnam veterans and the effects of war on their psychological states. Upon journeying home from the brutal Vietnam War and finding out his only surviving comrade has recently passed away, John J. Rambo is met with discrimination and disdain from the people of the town of Hope, Washington. When Sheriff Will Teasle pushes the veteran to the breaking point with verbal and physical abuse, Rambo’s military instincts take over. He violently escapes his confines and flees into
In the short story "The Most Dangerous Game." -Richard Connell the quotation Character is what you are in the dark." Dwight Lyman Moody. can be implemented to Zaroff since the quote can reflect on the fact that in the times when no one is around everyone shows their true self. No one could have imagined that Zaroff in reality has been hunting the people that go to the island, there is a part where Rainsford asks him if he is serious about hunting.
The symbolism the gun holds in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” was that of manhood through the description the author had given us through personification, diction, and imagery. Richard Wright's short story, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” depicts the choices Dave took to display his manhood--such as purchasing a gun--to demand respect from others who mock him. Dave looks into purchasing a gun to accelerate his process to manhood and display it for people to respect him. After he obtained the weapon, he had taken it for a test run pointing it at the mule and--accidentally--shot the animal. Though he was caught in his lie of the shooting and now had to pay off the mule, he still continued to fire it off in his show off how he is a grown man.
In Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the war in Iraq is described as an intense masculine experience. Through the pages, the presence of women is marginal, if there is any woman in the short stories, and the reader enters in a realm of men and, more important, of what it means to be a real man. The assumption of war as a complete masculine experience might seem pretty obvious; however, Phil Klay is able to offer a crude and clear depiction of it. The author tells twelve different short stories of men who have only one thing in common: the experience of the Iraq War. But this is not simply a book about the war, but also about the consequences that this terrible experience has on the soldiers.
The concept of death is a mystery to the living. When we lose someone, we grieve the loss but we also take the time to celebrate life. In retrospect, we look at it as meaning to take every minute as if it is the last. In the poem “The Emperor of Ice cream”, Wallace Stevens doesn’t acknowledge death, but uses ice cream to suggest that life is short and precious. However, in “Bullet in the Brain”, Tobias Wolff uses the finality of death to look at someone’s (such as the character) life for one final time through memories and personality in order to show someone’s innocence and significance by what they did in the past.
In modern society, guns are seen as a form of control. Those who have guns are able to overpower those who do not. This trend was set when guns were first invented and has stayed the same throughout history. The one place where guns are not a symbol of power and control is in literature, specifically “The Old Gun” and Hamilton. In Mo Yan’s short story “The Old Gun”, the protagonist is a hungry boy who does not even know how to use the titular firearm.
In Tim O’brien’s book, The Things They Carried, we see the detrimental causes and effects of the enforced stereotype of male masculinity. Tim uses many factors including the setting, characters, symbolism and other components like these to conveys his feelings and emotions. Many of those feelings and emotions derive from his personal experience in the war. The Things They Carried accurately shows what it is to struggle with the stereotypical image of a man in how it presents itself in everyday life along with its adverse and restricting effects.
720). Underpinning mass war rape or rape as political policy (Rittner & Roth, 2012) are “patriarchal gender relations” (Messerschmidt, 2006, p. 708), “hegemonic masculinity” (Mullins, 2009, 730), sexual violence (Burn, 2011; Rittner & Roth, 2012), and competing nationalisms (Messerschmidt, 2006) particularly in country-specific or regional specific armed conflicts in which ethnicity, nationalism, and beliefs in ethnic superiority combined with racism take precedence. In turn, the three-way relationship between nationalism, militarism, and patriarchal masculinity becomes the ideal breeding grounds for genocidal rape (Albanese, 200, p. 1007 as cited in Messerschmidt, 2006, p. 709), leading to the construction of a hierarchy of masculinities (Hunnicutt, 2009). This socially constructed hierarchy of masculinities then serves to justify masculine domination and ethnic superiority over the “Other women, Other men, and the Other nation” (Messerschmidt, 2006, p. 710); thereby, justifying the goal of humiliating and metaphorically castrating or emasculating male members of the targeted population (Mullins,
The second method that females attempt to use for constructing their gender identities is related to the biological aspect of their bodies. Females start employing their bodies as a signifier for their female identities by forming their personal awareness of their gender abilities and their sexual orientations. The biological manifestations that are ascribed to body allow human beings to shape their gender identities; they become aware of their gender roles and abilities that their bodies have including their sexualities. Human body in a certain way achieves a coherent unit of human identity. The body can be used as a tool for constructing gender roles and thus gender identities.