Wars Affect On Masculinity

War and being a soldier affects a man’s masculinity. Shown in The Sun Also Rises through Jake Barnes and in the real world today people who go off to war have qualities of being brave, strong, loyal, and manly. All of these qualities are qualities of a masculine person. People who go off to war do not need to prove they are masculine, others already see them that way.

Although war can make a person masculine, it can also hurt it. War can take away a man's masculinity through physcial injuries. For example Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises was physically injured during the war which affeced him being with women, which would make some women see him as less masculine.

Others, who do not go to war, feel that they need to prove their masculinity in other ways. Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises does not believe he is masculine so he uses boxing as a way to prove to other people that he is. Today some people in order to prove they are tough fight.

“He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt” (11).

“You’re an expatriate” (120)