The search for love and feminine identity in the war literature of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien

This dissertation examines how Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien challenge the emotionally restrictive nature of our stereotypical expectations of manhood in the context of the war experience. The analysis centers on creating a feminist critical space that affirms the male desire for feminine influence. Though their methods differs, both Hemingway and O'Brien create male characters who seek freedom from the insistence that they perpetually be brave, strong, un-emotive, and otherwise "manly," and freedom from the fear that such a "failure" to perform as expected will not signify that they are less than men. And yet these characters often are at war with themselves, as they struggle with how to endure suffering and loss and still perform as men. Hemingway develops characters who discover that to live and die well, a man must avail himself to the feminine, and be vulnerable to love. O'Brien demonstrates how a failure to listen---both to ourselves and to one another---thwarts love and prevents human closeness. This project uncovers Hemingway and O'Brien's efforts to subvert traditional masculinity by urging the reader to imagine alternative expressions of masculinity and femininity, and to accept male characters whose thoughts and actions defy expectations for masculine performance.