Caroline Humphrey Post 3

What does the role of gender play in your story? How are men and women portrayed differently?

          When I first looked at this question, I thought it was not relavent to this novel, for women are rarely mentioned in the book. That is when I realized that said a lot about females in this time period. This story takes place in the sixties, and at the same time in the United States, a major feminism movement was occurring. When women are actually mentioned like Mary Anne and Martha, they are not perceived the same way men are. For example, when Lieutenant Cross mentions Martha he constantly talks about her being a virgin and not about her personality or what she wants to do for the rest of her life. Then, when Mary Anne was brought up, they were extremely in awe that a woman would come to Vietnam. O'Brien even makes comments like, "it was the sort of show that a girl will sometimes put on for her boyfriend's entertainment"(91). They talked about her like she was some fragile, helpless girl and was only there to please her boyfriend. Then, she started to show interest in the war, and they were in awe. These are the only two women mentioned in the novel so far.
         I do not believe the men in this novel were being jerks, but they were just ignorant to the situation at home because they were gone for so long. Even if they did realize what was going on, some of them may have been using this as a coping mechanism. They could have been refusing to believe that life was going on without them. This is actually very sad to think about. They were living in Vietnam fighting a war, and everything that they knew back in America was changing. We talk about their tiny things that they use as "good luck charms," but this just shows how nervous and upset these men were to be here. They used denial and tiny items to make themselves believe everything would be okay. The role of gender in this novel is briefly mentioned,but when it is, it really shows a lot about these men and how tough war was.