Crisis Of Masculinity-manipulated Masculinity In The Naked And The Dead

20thcentury is the period in which the study of masculinity has achieved asignificant development. Men who have been in the dominant position forthousands of years at present are being gradually dethroned by both male andfemale scholars, sprouted by whom men are becoming more and moreconscious that deemed as the dominant species, they are actually encounteredwith a masculine crisis deeper than they think. Influenced by the patriarchalideology and those politicians who take advantage of it, men respond to themasculine crisis via proving their one hundred percent masculinity which ismanifested by the behavior of toughness, ruthlessness and emotionlessness.Among ways in which men think they can resolve their masculinity crisis,there is one that is most effective and most direct, that is the war. Because asthe most superior form of men s homosocial organization, the war serves asone of the most important tools through which men can affirm and prove their masculinity in the era of men s identity crisis. What s more, war is nothing butthe extension of politics. Thus, men s plunging into the war creates forthemselves another crisis being manipulated by the mainstream ideology andpoliticians. The more eagerly men prove their masculinity through the war, thedeeper their masculine crisis are. The soldiers in the war are not winners ofmasculinity and dominants of the gender relationship, but victims andinnocents who are manipulated and need salvation and justification.Thus, set in the background of a sex polarized society and aiming todevelop and give a further study of the study of masculinity, the theory ofSex-Role Strain (SRS) put forward by Joseph H. Pleck and Kathy J. Phillipstheory on manipulated masculinity under the condition of war are employed inthis paper in order to answer the very question that why masculinities facechallenges and crisis and how they react and are manipulated. The textanalysis mainly focuses on The Naked and the Dead, one of Norman Mailer smasterpieces, which elaborates the very details of male soldiers frustration,reaction, crisis and endings. Hopefully through analyzing the manipulation ofmasculinity in the war through this novel, the major participant in thewar man can be somehow enlightened and be prevented from entering theslaughter house, thus preventing and solving potential wars and conflicts.