#7, The Things They Carried

In my opinion, the meaning of “de-gender” is another approach to present the situation of war. We, the readers, already know what is the basic characteristic of war is; masculinity. Ironically, it is true, not only because of inequality of men and women in terms of physical conditions or the role in war, but also the cruelty and inhumane circumstance of war by itself makes the whole atmosphere very “tough”. It is actually no matter the individual soldier or anybody in the war was a male or a female, the basis of war never changed for the individual, which is to kill people and win against the enemy. I think that “The Things They Carried” approached to this situation by adding another factor from outside of war, in other words, the third party, to break down and re-define this traditional masculinity of war. As Martha converses to Jim Cross in a letter, there’s both a connection and a disconnection between the ordinary life and a life in war; connection by expressing her feeling to Jim, but also it is disconnected because of their two completely different living environments, making them unable to overcome the limitation of distance and such a gap between the war and an ordinary life. Eventually, readers might notice that war should not be done for any reason for its violence, but also they might know whether the point of view of war is gender-neutral or masculinity, there’s such a difficulty at war to exercise what could have been done in ordinary life.