AN ANALYSIS OF GENDER AND SOCIAL CLASS AS A THEME IN SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS, “THE MEN WE CARRY IN OUR MINDS” Sanders’ essay explores his views on the difference in the lives of men and women in the society. The author explores the themes of gender and how men and women experience life as related to or depending on social and economic class. According to him, he finally realizes that men and women equally live hard lives, but he shows more sympathy towards men based on his experiences as a child. Everything he observed around him when he was young leads him to believe that men had it harder in life because they dealt with all the responsibilities around the house with no room for failure whatsoever. Men had to toil, doing hard jobs that would later have negative effects on their health at work and then come home to other household jobs like tilling their land and fixing leaks. Men, also, had to ensure that all the bills were paid and that the family was provided. Women, on the other hand, were tasked with just taking care of the children and staying home. The author at the time thought that women had it easier. The essay seeks to expound the reasoning behind the author’s perceptions of gender and social class from his early life up to adulthood based on an assessment non-literary texts. According to (McGinn and Oh), gender and what people use to define gender is based primarily upon the historical division of labor between men and women that has remained almost the same until now. Culture, interactions, institutions and psychological understanding of gender play a prominent role in the definition of gender time to time, and this definition has been dynamically interpreted and re-interpreted based on the factors as mentioned earlier. However, as above mentioned, the definition of gender even with the influence of culture, psychology, institutions, and interactions never strays far away from the baseline of labor division at home, at the workplace and in the society as a whole (McGinn and Oh). Culture is a culmination of the customs, ideas, beliefs and social behavior of a group of people or a society. The author is born into a community where men are the prime breadwinners of their families. They work demanding jobs day and night that would often lead to early deaths due to the effects on their health that those jobs would have. Women, on the other hand, were not required to do such heavy work. In fact, most of them did not work regular jobs or any jobs at all, and that was the accepted way of life. Providing for the family was a responsibility left to the men. Women were the caregivers of the family, taking care of the household, the children and the cooking. Therefore, customarily women are in charge of domestic responsibilities (chores) while men take out hard manual labor to support the family financially. The only local tasks that they deal with are those that require some level of hard work and knowledge which women are presumed not to have. As a result, culture plays a defining role in how the author as a child views gender and in this sense he gets the idea that the parts of women in the society are far much more comfortable than the roles of men. As the author explains, the interactions he had in his early life help him shape his perspective on who experienced a harder life. As a child, he recalls meeting farmers, welders, carpenters, horse trainers, coal miners, steelworkers, and factory workers. All the men the writer was able to interact with performed one form or the other of manual labor who were overworked and on top of that had such poor working conditions to the point that their jobs had effects on their health. Some were hard of hearing from working with machines that were too loud without safety gear, others had lost fingers, others had developed ulcers from working in highly stressful workplaces, others had respiratory issues from dust, and the rest has developed hernias from heavy lifting at work. Seemingly, nothing good seemed to come out of working at any of those places. Men who were not toilers were soldiers, and although soldiers did not do as much hard labor as toilers, their fate was death at the hands of the enemy in the instance of war. They were tools; killing machines that were expendable. Women on the other hand from the interactions the writer had in his childhood seemingly escaped all the suffering because they stayed home, visited neighbors, went shopping, went to church, and had a chance to interact with music, art, and literature. Women were not responsible at the end of the day for failing to provide for the family. That responsibility fell on the man. Therefore, the interactions the author has in his childhood, what he sees around him as the way of life makes him conclude that women had it easier. Social class, as explained by (McGinn and Oh), is defined as the characterization of self, relative to material resources including education, income, and occupational prestige and how these factors influence how one ranks themselves as compared to others. The mental representation of one’s rank is directly related to individual economic relationships with other people in the society. At the family level, social class is measured by total earnings and collective household wealth (assets) while at the individual level social class is measured using own income, parents’ income, occupation, and education (McGinn and Oh). The author’s family was not exactly wealthy judging from all the work that his father did. Although he ended up in a white-collar job, he began just the same as all the others doing manual labor and suffered the same adverse effects on his body as well. The fact that the writer’s father had been able to be promoted to the front office was more attributable to a good work record instead that to have the formal education and qualifications that allowed him to work at the front office. Fortunately, the author was able to bridge the gap between social classes (Gray and Allen) by receiving a scholarship that allowed him to attend a university meant for the rich. While at the university the writer can interact with children of higher social class, especially women, who present entirely different views which challenge his already formulated opinions about women. The writer can more critically assess the lives of the women from his childhood and realizes that they too did not have it easier than the men. They were the victims of prison homes, abandonment, bullying from men, and those who were able to get jobs outside the home had pathetic roles that did not empower them but exploited them. In summation, the writer can discern that one’s opinion of gender and class directly relates to their personal life experiences, where they are born, and what they see around them. The children of the rich formulated their opinions from the men they had in their lives that were accountants and architects and whose privileges they enjoyed. The children of the poor on the other hand formulated their opinions from the men they interacted with who were toilers and as such struggled in life. With that being said, the relationship between gender and social class and the formulation of opinions of both begins at home and magnifies at the workplace (McGinn and Oh). THE ANALYSIS OF THE THEME OF WARFARE IN TIM O'BRIEN’S, "THE THINGS THEY CARRIED" “The Things They Carried” is a short story that depicts all the tangible and intangible things soldiers carry at war that assist them one way or the other both mentally and psychologically and physically. In the third person, the author tells us about a unit of soldiers and all the things they carry along with them. In addition to the standard gear that soldiers are required to carry, some of the soldiers carry more rounds of ammunition, others photographs of dear ones, Bibles, tranquilizer pills, letters, and other items depending on the type of mission. Most of the personal items that the soldiers carry are a reflection of their psychological states of mind. The essay explores the state of warfare and especially its effects on soldiers. War is the common factor that brings all the characters in the story together. Even though the men voluntarily join the army, they are there because they need to fulfill the social obligation that is required of them although it is unspoken. As citizens and as soldiers they have to commit to the war and to winning the fight by all means and therefore, even faced with imminent death, very few defect and those who do are considered cowards. The judgmental attitude towards defectors already causes a mental inhibition in soldiers to give up and choose to save their own lives. For example, soldiers who decide to take the easy way out my maiming themselves so that they do not fight are mocked by the unit. The emotional and psychological effects of warfare on soldiers are equally as damaging as the physical effects which are being maimed or wounded. Physical wounds may heal, but emotional and psychological ones are by far harder to heal and more challenging to treat. The witnessing of horrific events such as death, destruction, torture, the threat to one’s life and the participation of soldiers in the same hostilities they experience cause a range of effects on the human mind (Oak and Pols). Emotional and psychological effects take the form of mental escapism, fear, emotional trauma, irrational acts, and clinging to mementos. Ted Lavender carries the fear of warfare and death with him. In addition to the fear and as a result of it, he carries nine more rounds of ammunition and tranquilizer pills. Soldiers often deal with trauma through substance abuse (Thomas, Wilk, and Riviere). The drugs help to numb thoughts and feelings and create a temporary sense of euphoria at the same time dimming all the reflexes a soldier is supposed to have. Possibly, the effect of the pills on Ted Lavender was the reason why he was not able to detect the enemy early enough to prevent himself from being shot. The distress experienced by the unit after the death of Lavender is dealt with differently by the members of the group. The leader, Jimmy Cross carries guilt and shame and feels that he was not focused enough to prevent Ted’s death. Therefore, he burns all of Martha’s letters and photographs. As revenge, the soldiers burn the whole village of Than Khe. Another member of the unit, Kiowa, deals with his comrade’s death by talking about it and even when another member forces him to be quiet, he cannot stop thinking about it. Kiowa believes that the only emotion he can muster up from the event is a surprise, but it is clear that he is traumatized by it. Mental escapism is a tactic used by the mind to deal with stress and trauma, and all the soldiers experience it one way or the other. After Ted’s death, the soldiers pretend that they are being ferried back home by jets if only to escape their current state of stress and despair for a while. Some men in the unit express inexplicable behavior in the form of irrational acts. For example, Norman Bowker carries with him a thumb cut by Mitchell Sanders from a Viet Cong corpse they found lying in a ditch. Mitchell gives Norman the thumb and tells him that the moral to it is “Have gun, will travel.” Another member of the unit, Henry Dobbins expresses his failure to understand the moral. The phrase of the moral has no relatable meaning to it, yet Norman carries the thumb around from then henceforth due to superstition. In other instances, the soldiers cling to mementos from loved ones that enable them to feel anchored to their homes, friends, and family. Jimmy, for example, carries letters and photographs of his love interest Martha. The writer does not fail to tell us that Jimmy’s love for Martha is an unrequited one yet, he still insists on carrying her memories around. Jimmy allows himself to be distracted and engulfed by thoughts of Martha almost all the time and it partly costs him the life of one of his platoon members. Kiowa carries moccasins while Henry Dobbins carries his girlfriend’s stockings around his neck on night missions. All those items carry sentimental value to the soldiers and are their piece of home in a foreign county. In conclusion, what the entire unit of soldiers share in this story is some form or the other of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that is characterized by stress, escapism, aggressive behaviors, substance abuse, various degrees of depression and as a result, functional impairment (Thomas, Wilk, and Riviere). Mental health effects of war mainly affect the ability of soldiers to serve and require great care in identification and treatment during and after warfare. The human mind will use any means possible to cope with trauma and stress especially when there is no immediate hope of help to come. Works Cited Gray, Emily and Kim Allen. ​Social Class​. 15 January 2013. http://www.genderandeducation.com/resources-2/inclusion/social-class/. 28 March 2018. McGinn, Kathleen L. and Eunsil Oh. "Gender, social class, and wome's employment." ​Current Opinion in Psychology​ (2017): 18: 84-88. http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/McGinnOh_GenderSocialClass_COPSYC_495 _201708001331892896_75165458-c7d9-495a-b87b-cc77fe85ded1.pdf​. Oak, Stephanie and Hans Pols. "WAR & Military Mental Health: The US Psychiatric Response in the 20th Century." ​American Public Health Association​ (2007): 97(12): 2132-2142. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2089086/​. Thomas, Jeffrey L., Joshua E. Wilk and Lyndon A. Riviere. "Prevalence of Mental Health Problems and Functional Impairment Among Active Component and National Guard Soldiers 3 and 12 Months Following Combat in Iraq." ​Arch Gen Psychiatry​ (2010): 67(6): 614-623. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/210802. English Composition II Essay 3: Short Research Essay Now that we are in the third unit of the class, you have read, considered, and discussed literary texts that have focused on four different broad themes (individuality and community, crime and punishment, family and identity, and power and responsibility). Until now, you have not been required to seek out any outside sources when writing your essays. Now you are going to begin to do research. For this assignment you will choose any one of the literary texts that you read so far this term that you did not write about for Essay 1 or 2 and do research that helps you to analyze a “real world” issue that comes up in that text. Your essay will explain how your sources help us to better understand the text’s approach to the issue. The “real world” issue is your choice. Because this is the second semester composition class, I assume that you have learned how to do research in your previous English class. If you need a refresher, you can go to our library’s website and look at the link for “research help.” Specific tutorials for English Composition II is found . Requirements: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Six (8) full double-spaced pages minimum, 12 pt Times New Roman font A title A clear, focused thesis A minimum of two (2) outside scholarly sources (see additional research requirements below) Quotations and references that support the thesis MLA documentation within the essay and a Works Cited page at the end (not counted in the six (6) page minimum A clear pattern of organization No pattern of serious errors (fragments, run-on sentences) Research requirements: The research material that you use for this assignment must meet the following requirements: • • • It should be non-literary: Please don’t look up literary criticism on the texts-for example, don’t use criticism that analyzes symbols or characters in the work. Stick to non-literary sources that provide you with ideas and information that help you analyze a “real-world” issue in the work. It should be college-level material: All scholarly books and journal articles are college-level. If you’re not sure if your source is OK to use, please ask me. Avoid these sources: Wikipedia, other general encyclopedias, web sites such as SparkNotes, dictionaries, and web sites that provide pre-written essays may not be used as research sources. Sources of assistance for this assignment: • Feel free to email me. Include the following information in the top left hand corner of the first page: Name: Date: ENGL 112 Essay # Instructions for submitting your paper: Attach a copy of the paper through the “Assignment” link on the timeline by the due date listed on the timeline.
Purchase answer to see full attachment