The “Drama of Gender Difference,” or the Question of Masculinity and Patriarchy in the Vietnam War Fiction

Year 2023, Volume: 33 Issue: 1, 219 - 237, 04.07.2023

Irina Strout

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2021-1012712

Abstract

Many changes brought about by the Vietnam war are reflected in the literature of the period, in which both Vietnam veterans and non-veterans alike became formative creators. Included among the Vietnam war writers are poets, playwrights, and fiction writers such as David Rabe, Oliver Stone, Gustav Hasford, Philip Caputo, Winston Groom, Robert Olen Butler and many others. Tim O’Brien and Bobbie Ann Mason also take their place in the gallery of Vietnam war writers, being included among the authors who relish life’s enigmas and uncertainties in their fiction. They incorporate elements of their own life (Bobbie Ann Mason) and war experience (Tim O’Brien) into their fiction, blurring the line between reality and fantasy, fiction and truth. The accuracy of characters or events and places is not significant in their writings, as they are more interested in the emotions and feelings of their men and women rather than in mere facts. Understanding oneself as a writer is a hard journey; it is a quest that authors struggle to complete and may never fulfill. War fiction plays its part in making a significant contribution to the understanding of the Vietnam War as it enlarges the psychology of homosocial relations and deconstructs the conventional stereotypes of masculinity: from a wounded veteran to a John Wayne type hero. Men in many novels are sympathetic characters betrayed by political and cultural myths. Women are often excluded from the male war arena as the ‘Other’, yet they face a number of challenges, and their roles are intrinsic to the male experience. In this paper two works of fiction will be discussed which deal with the exclusion of women, rejection of femininity and restitution of masculinity. These works are Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.

Keywords

masculinity, male bonding, war, manhood, Vietnam gender dichotomy

Supporting Institution

none

Project Number

none

Thanks

Thank you for your time and feedback

References

• Bourne, D. (1992). “Artful Dodge Interviews with Tim O’Brien.” Artful Dodge 22.3, pp. 74-90. google scholar
• Broyles, W. (1986). Brothers in Arms: A Journey from War to Peace. New York: Knopf. google scholar
• ---. (1984, November). “Why Men Love War.” Esquire, pp. 55-65. google scholar
• Carton, E. (1991, Summer). “Vietnam and the Limits of Masculinity.” American Literary History 3:2, pp. 294-318. google scholar
• Epshteyn, J. B. (1987). Women and War. New York: Basic Books. google scholar
• Herzog, T. (1997). Tim O’Brien. New York: Twayne Publishers. google scholar
• ---. (1992). Vietnam War Stories: Innocence Lost. New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Huston, N. (1982). “The Tales of War and Tears of Women.” Women’s Studies International Forum 5:3/4, pp. 271-82. google scholar
• Jeffords, S. (1989). The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington: Indiana UP. google scholar
• Kinney, K. (2000). Friendly Fire. American Images of the Vietnam War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Lopez, K. (1997). “Tim O’Brien - Introduction to his writing”. Bookseller, pp. 1-3. google scholar
• Mason, B. A. (1985). In Country. New York: Harper. google scholar
• Myers, T. (1988, Winter). “Dispatches from Ghost Country: The Vietnam Veteran in Recent American Fiction.” Genre XXI, pp. 409-28. google scholar
• ---. (1988). Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam. New York: Oxford UP. google scholar
• O’Brien, T. (1990). The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin. google scholar
• Ryan, M. (1994, Fall). “The Other Side of Grief: American Women Writers and the Vietnam War.” Critique 36:1, pp. 41-57. google scholar
• Sedgwick, E. (1985). Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP. google scholar
• Smith, L. (1994, Fall). “’The Things Men Do’: The Gendered Subtext in Tim O’Brien’s Esquire Stories.” Critique 36: 1, pp. 16-39. google scholar
• ---. (1989, Summer-Fall). Back Against the Wall: Anti-Feminist Backlash in Vietnam War Literature.” Vietnam Generation 1:3/4, pp. 115-26. google scholar
• Tal, K. (1990, Spring). “The Mind at War: Images of Women in Novels by Combat Veterans.” Contemporary Literature 31:1, pp. 76-96. google scholar
• Woolf, V. (1938). The Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt. google scholar