These are the two types into which women can be classificated in the eyes of a Marine. This attitude towards women might be disguisting in the eyes of the reader of Anthony Swofford´s war novel Jarhead: a Marine´s chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles (2003) but it seems as if it is normal in the United States Marine Corps, (US MC), to which the author belonged during the first Gulf War. Having grown up in Tachikawa, Japan and having served a ordinary High-School education it is interesting to find out, where this attitude came from and if it already existed in the mind of the author.
“A bitch is a bitch and a lady is a lady.”[1]
These are the two types into which women can be classificated in the eyes of a Marine. This attitude towards women might be disguisting in the eyes of the reader of Anthony Swofford´s war novel Jarhead: a Marine´s chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles (2003) but it seems as if it is normal in the United States Marine Corps, (US MC), to which the author belonged during the first Gulf War. Having grown up in Tachikawa, Japan and having served a ordinary High-School education it is interesting to find out, where this attitude came from and if it already existed in the mind of the author.
So does the time the author spent in the US MC have an effect on his attitude, on his respect towards women?
The first woman to fall in love with in the life of every man is his mother, because she is the one who gave birth and with that life to him and this causes a very deep bonding already in the first few minutes of the life of a man. It seems as if nothing in the world could shake this special relationship. In the case of Anthony Swofford, his mother, whom he deeply loves, takes a new husband while Anthony serves in the Marine Corps (MC). This marriage in fact shakes the bonding between mother and son, he is deeply disappointed and turns away from her. It seems as if the relationship between mother and son collapsed-
So does Anthony Swofford still feel the intense mother-to-child-affection after his term of service in the US MC or does he feel betrayed from his mother so much that his respect towards her dwindles?
His mother hates the MC and everything that has something to do with it. Looking at her background it is plausible, because she has lost her husband and her brother-in-law to the war. Her husband “has served in the jungles of Vietnam from February of 1969 to February of 1970. “.[2] When the two of them married, he was a handsome, tall man, somebody towards people bring respect. After the time he returned from Vietnam, he had to cope with several diseases, which did not appear at a moment´s notice but came creeping. He “suffered migraines”[3] for more than eleven years and as they “tapered off, his hands [remained] locked in fists”[4] what made him unable to dress by himself, to drive a car, and unable to live his life autonomous. Mrs Swofford had to manage the life with her children, of which Anthony, the youngest, was ten years old, alone and without the help of her husband,
who emerged to be a terrorising man because of his diseases. After all of the things she has done for him, Mr Swofford got a divorce from her and leaves her as “a confused and angry and betrayed woman”[5]. It is absolutely understandable that she blames the US MC and everything that is related with that for having lost her husband.
In her family there is another loss of a person that Mrs Swofford blames on the MC, it is the death of her brother-in-law, who died in Denmark. The fact, that he did not die in a war, that he “was not killed by the enemy, but [by] poisoned milk”[6] does not make a difference for her. He died at a age and under circumstances he need not to and in her eyes the US MC is to blame for that.
The act that shows how she loves her son, is when she puts a US MC-iron-on his T-shirt at the age of fourteen. She knew that Anthony “decided (…) [his] destiny”[7] with the wish to have a US MC T-shirt and although she really hates and fears the Army, she helps him getting his dreams to come true, and she seales his fate with this act.
Anthony knows that his mother hates the US MC and he knows that it must have been really hard for her to support him in his wish to become one of them. For this behaviour he loves his mother and he offers her all of the respect he can, at the point of the ironing the relationship between mother and son has come to a climax.
After a climax there has to be a denouement, there is no possibility of getting further up the hill. The denouement, or the shock, as it is a shock in the case of Anthony Swofford, is when he receives a letter from home in which some photographs are sent to him. First of all, he does not recognize the marriage he
thinks that he is “seeing scenes from a birthday party”[8] but he cannot remember having forgotten a birthday of any family member. He even has to ask a friend of him what the pictures look like to him, so unbelievable is the fact that his mother could have married again. He is disturbed that he received the letter from his sister and not directly from his mother but the thing that hurts him most is that his mother “is now married to a man (…) [he has] never met”[9]. Anthony is really disappointed and he expresses that as every Marine would express it, he curses. He has to suffer the humilitation that another man calls his mother a “Bitch (that) didn´t even ask (…) [his] permission.”[10]. Although he says that a really good friend can call his mother this name, he is hurt by it and this rises his temper towards his mother.
[...]
[1] Anthony Swofford, Jarhead: a Marine´s chronicle of the Gulf war and other battles (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2003) 110.
[2] Swofford, 39
[3] Swofford, 40
[4] Swofford, 41
[5] Swofford, 204
[6] Swofford, 131
[7] Swofford, 131
[8] Swofford, 147
[9] Swofford, 149
[10] Swofford, 147
- Quote paper
- Lisa-Andrea Glatz (Author), 2004, Women in Anthony Swofford´s Jarhead: a Marine´s Chronicle of the Gulf War and other Battles, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/50187
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