Page 182 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

be an oppressive sense of nakedness). Even the prison-like than a boy’s camp, but if it were not
4
expression “Be a man!” strikes me as insulting for them we would have no Elks’ Lodges, no pool
DIFFERENTIATION Identity and abusive. It means: Be stupid, be unfeeling, rooms, no boxing matches, no Marines.
obedient, soldierly and stop thinking. Man And perhaps no sports as we know them.
Speaking and Listening means “manly” — how can one think about men Everyone is aware of how few in number are the
You might have students look at paragraph 2 without considering the terrible ambition of athletes who behave like gentlemen. Just as high
for its definition techniques: Theroux uses a manliness? And yet it is part of every man’s life. school basketball teaches you how to be a poor
for its definition techniques: Ther
oux uses a
metaphor (of an “ill-fitting coat”) and con- It is a hideous and crippling lie; it not only insists loser, the manly attitude towards sports seems to
trast (with being a woman). He responds to on difference and connives at superiority, it is be little more than a recipe for creating bad mar-
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
a common usage of “man” with the phrase also by its very nature destructive — emotionally riages, social misfits, moral degenerates, sadists,
“Be a man!” He lists a variety of synonyms. damaging and socially harmful. latent rapists and just plain louts. I regard high
He asks a rhetorical question. You might The youth who is subverted, as most are, school sports as a drug far worse than mari-
discuss with your students the benefits of into believing in the masculine ideal is effec- juana, and it is the reason that the average tennis
using a variety of techniques when making tively separated from women and he spends the champion, say, is a pathetic oaf.
a claim of definition, and discuss the tech- rest of his life finding women a riddle and a Any objective study would find the quest for
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
niques as thinking strategies and rhetorical nuisance. Of course, there is a female version of manliness essentially right-wing, puritanical,
choices that they might use in their own this male affliction. It begins with mothers cowardly, neurotic and fueled largely by a fear of
writing. encouraging little girls to say (to other adults) women. It is also certainly philistine. There is no
“Do you like my new dress?” In a sense, little book-hater like a Little League coach. But indeed
girls are traditionally urged to please adults all the creative arts are obnoxious to the manly
with a kind of coquettishness, while boys are ideal, because at their best the arts are pursued by
enjoined to behave like monkeys towards each uncompetitive and essentially solitary people. It
other. The nine-year-old coquette proceeds to makes it very hard for a creative youngster, for any
become womanish in a subtle power game in boy who expresses the desire to be alone seems to
which she learns to be sexually indispensable, be saying that there is something wrong with him.
socially decorative and always alert to a man’s It ought to be clear by now that I have some-
sense of inadequacy. thing of an objection to the way we turn boys
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Femininity — being lady-like — implies into men. It does not surprise me that when the
needing a man as witness and seducer; but President of the United States [Ronald Reagan]
What does the first sentence of paragraph 4 masculinity celebrates the exclusive company has his customary weekend off he dresses like a
say about a woman’
say about a woman’s need for a man? And, of men. That is why it is so grotesque; and that cowboy — it is both a measure of his insecurity
s need for a man? And,
alternately, what does it say that a man is is also why there is no manliness without and his willingness to please. In many ways,
supposed to seek out? inadequacy — because it denies men the American culture does little more for a man than
natural friendship of women. prepare him for modeling clothes in the L. L.
It is very hard to imagine any concept of 5 Bean catalogue. I take this as a personal insult
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING manliness that does not belittle women, and it because for many years I found it impossible to
begins very early. At an age when I wanted to admit to myself that I wanted to be a writer. It
Theroux does not articulate until paragraph meet girls — let’s say the treacherous years of was my guilty secret, because being a writer was
8 how he has been personally affected by thirteen to sixteen — I was told to take up a incompatible with being a man.
male stereotypes. What is the effect of this sport, get more fresh air, join the Boy Scouts, and There are people who might deny this, but
delay? How do we recognize it as a shift? I was urged not to read so much. It was the 1950s that is because the American writer, typically, has
How does it fit into his line of reasoning? and if you asked too many questions about sex been so at pains to prove his manliness that we
You might extend this discussion to ask you were sent to camp — boy’s camp, of course: have come to see literariness and manliness as
students to consider why Theroux did not the nightmare. Nothing is more unnatural or mingled qualities. But first there was a fear that
title his essay “On Being a Male Writer.”
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CLOSE READING
You might have students look closely at or something else? You might also raise
paragraphs 5–8 to describe Theroux’s tone. the question of historical perspective here:
He makes bold categorical claims about do students get the sense that Theroux’s
masculinity and American culture. You might evidence might be historically accurate or
ask students—perhaps in small groups, or exaggerated? Ask students to find evidence
in writing—to describe his attitude toward from the text that supports their claims,
his subject and his use of evidence. Is he and to write commentary that develops and
bitter, realistic, offended, defensive, or some- explains their ideas (make sure they do not
thing else? Is his evidence representative, simply label the tone without connecting it to
purposefully hyperbolic, unfairly distorted, commentary).

288 chapter 4 / Identity

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