Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
What was hemingway's views on male and female roles in the war in the sun rises
Hemingway views women on hills like white elephants
Hemingway views women on hills like white elephants
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Indian Camp and Soldiers Home Young Women as Objects
In Ernest Hemingway's short stories "Indian Camp" and "Soldier's Home," young women are treated as objects whose purpose is either reproduction or pleasure. They do not and cannot participate to a significant degree in the masculine sphere of experience, and when they have served their purpose, they are set aside. They do not have a voice in the narrative, and they represent complications in life that must be overcome in one way or another. While this portrayal of young women is hardly unique to Hemingway, the author uses it as a device to probe the male psyche more deeply.
*Paragraph Break*"Indian Camp" opens with an all-male convoy of rowboats heading across the lake, with young Nick, his doctor father and his Uncle George off to see an "Indian lady [who is] very sick." As they disembark on the other side and follow a young Indian bearing a lantern to the camp where childbirth is taking place, the men's guiding interest is not in the mother-to-be as a person, but in her physiology as a case study. When they find her screaming in bed, Nick's father dehumanizes her by saying: "[Her] screams are not important. I don't hear them because they are not important."
*Paragraph Break*Bitten by the young woman during labor pangs, Uncle George reacts instinctively: "Damn squaw bitch!" She is not seen as a co-participant with the men overseeing the birth. Instead, she is merely an object they are operating on, a "bitch" soon to whelp her pup, so to speak. The "studied control of the father and doctor as rational man" (DeFalco 30), a carefully constructed pose, stands in contrast to the young woman's inarticulate helplessness in childbirth. The likening of the docto...
... middle of paper ...
...on to leave behind his hometown with its plethora of beauties underscores his view of young women as inconsequential objects of pleasure.
*Paragraph Break*Both "Indian Camp" and "Soldier's Home" place young women in a secondary, objectified role. Hemingway takes this approach to focus attention on the psyches of his male protagonists, self-obsessed in their youth or war-weariness. It may not endear the author to feminist readers, but it does make for some powerful short fiction.
Bibliography:
1.DeFalco, Joseph. The Hero in Hemingway's Short Stories. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963.
2.Flora, Joseph M. Ernest Hemingway: A Study of the Short Fiction. G.K. Hall & Co., 1989.
3.Westbrook, Max. "Grace under Pressure: Hemingway and the Summer of 1920." Ernest Hemingway: The Writer in Context. Ed. James Nagel. University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Hemingway can be seen as a women's man, he was attracted to women, and marriage did not prevent him from having affairs. Whatever his life was, one of the main themes in his writing remained his determination to understand the difference between the two genders. This difference always mattered in his texts, as we will see in this short story, written by Hemingway, “Up In Michigan”. In this story, Hemingway tries to tell the story in the way he thinks a woman would see and live it, during the story, he will alternate the two point of views, the man’s (Jim), and the woman’s (Liz), and he will end the story on Liz’s view.
Hemingway deals with the effects of war on the male desire for women in many of his novels and short stories, notably in his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In this novel, the main character Jake, is impotent because of an injury received in World War I. Jakes situation is reminiscent of our main character Krebs. Both characters have been damaged by World War I; the only difference is Jake’s issue is physical, while Krebs issue is mental. Krebs inwardly cannot handle female companionship. Although Krebs still enjoys watching girls from his porch and he “vaguely wanted a girl but did not want to have to work to get her” (167). Krebs found courting “not worth it” (168). The girls symbolize what World War I stripped from our main character, a desire that is natural for men, the desire for women.
One observation that can be made on Hemingway’s narrative technique as shown in his short stories is his clipped, spare style, which aims to produce a sense of objectivity through highly selected details. Hemingway refuses to romanticize his characters. Being “tough” people, such as boxers, bullfighters, gangsters, and soldiers, they are depicted as leading a life more or less without thought. The world is full of s...
The only action Fredrick took was to throw a cup of water on the log, but "the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants"(Hemingway, 328). This hopeless, mechanical picture of suffering allows us to understand other forms of pain in the book. Catherine's pregnancy follows this same pattern.
In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1208-1209. Hemingway, Ernest. A.
Her conversation with the reader represent attempts to arouse sympathy for black women by drawing on the shared experience of womanhood and motherhood while emphasizing the contrast between a free and enslaved life. She juxtaposes “O, you happy free women” with “poor bond-woman” and reminds the reader that her child is hers, that “no hand but that of death can take them from [her]” (16). Offering the grim image of a child’s death forces the reader to confront the horror of having a child unwillingly stolen from her, a reality, like a premature death, few would contemplate as frequently as a slave mother. The imagery of a child torn from a mother, with “irons upon his wrists”, repeats throughout the narrative to prompt the reader to conclude that “slavery is damnable” (23). However, as much as she wishes the reader to identify with a slave mother, she acknowledges that she cannot.
In the first short story, called “Indian Camp”, Nick is a little boy, and he accompanies his father as he has to conduct a birth of a young Indian
...as Mary Ann in the novel show that women can do so much more than sew and cook. Without women, all wars would have been a lot harder. Although men tend to keep a macho facade in order to calm others (such as the women in their lives), inside they may be like glass, easy to break. A society set on the ideal stoic, fearless warrior who acts ruthlessly and saves the damsel in distress (also showing that women are weak) obviously is one where doomed to sexism. Without the comfort and inspiration, men would have deteriorated in the face of death. All and all, women provided the needed comfort, nursing, “manpower”, and love that the soldiers of Vietnam need, something that helped them endure the havoc of war. O’Brien’s expert use of the feminist lens allows the reader to know that women indeed were a powerhouse in the Vietnam war, without whom, men would have perished.
" The Hemingway Review. 15.1 (Fall 1995): p. 27. Literature Resource Center -.
Hemingway’s characters exemplify the effects of combat because World War I had a negative impact on them; the veterans lead meaningless lives filled with masculine uncertainty. Jake and his friends (all veterans) wander aimlessly throughout the entire novel. Their only goal seems to be finding an exciting restaurant or club where they will spend their time. Every night consists of drinking and dancing, which serves as a distraction from their very empty lives. The alcohol helps the characters escape from their memories from the war, but in the end, it just causes more commotion and even evokes anger in the characters. Their years at war not only made their lives unfulfilling but also caused the men to have anxiety about their masculinity, especially the narrator Jake, who “gave more than his life” in the war (Hemingway). Jake feels that the war took away his manhood because he is unable to sleep with Brett as a result of an injury. Although he wants to have a relationship with Brett, and spends most of his time trying to pursue her, she rejects him because he cannot have a physical relationship with her. At several points in the novel, Brett and Jake imagine what their lives could have been like together, had he not been injured during the war. Thus, his physical injury gives him emotional distress because he cannot have a relationship with the woman he always wanted. The traditional American perception of...
The novel, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway is an example of how an entire generation redefined gender roles after being affected by the war. The Lost Generation of the 1920’s underwent a great significance of change that not only affected their behaviors and appearances but also how they perceived gender identity. Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes are two of the many characters in the novel that experience shattered gender roles because of the post war era. The characters in the novel live a lifestyle in which drugs and alcohol are used to shadow emotions and ideals of romanticism. Brett’s lack of emotional connection to her various lovers oppose Jake’s true love for her which reveals role reversal in gender and the redefinition of masculinity and femininity. The man is usually the one that is more emotionally detached but in this case Lady Brett Ashley has a masculine quality where as Jake has a feminine quality. Both men and female characters in the novel do not necessarily fit their gender roles in society due to the post war time period and their constant partying and drinking. By analyzing Brett, Jake, and the affects the war had on gender the reader obtains a more axiomatic understanding of how gender functions in the story by examining gender role reversal and homosexuality.
Hemingway's characters in the story represent the stereotypical male and female in the real world, to some extent. The American is the typical masculine, testosterone-crazed male who just ...
Hemingway, Ernest. "To Maxwell Perkins." 16 Nov. 1933. Ernest Hemingway/Selected Letters, 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Charles Scribner?s Sons, 1981. 400.
...for giving birth, her obedient stay after being caught, and her sudden yet unsurprising death describes, in Lispector’s viewpoints, the natural course of an average female’s life. Although Lispector wrote these stories in the 1940’s, reflecting on the then current gender inequalities and
Like many novels and mini-series of the past, present and future, gender is always a subject that is to be explored. To begin, in The Emigrants written by George Lamming, we see the recurring theme that gender is represented through the view of the superior or more important gender, and of the lesser but somewhat still important gender. The men in The Emigrants, are highly valued, viewed as the ones fighting the war, who should be looking for training an education, to provide for their wives, and for themselves. The women are seen as lesser, sometimes as objects but also valued, as they provide support to the men. They are represented with a contrasting view. In the beginning of the novel, we see that the men are highly respected; “the soldiers