Male Armor

Drawing on a wide range of work, from the war novels of Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, James Jones, and Joseph Heller to David Rabe's play Streamers and Anthony Swofford's Jarhead, Adams examines the evolving image of the soldier from World War I to Operation Desert Storm. In discussing these changing perceptions of masculinity, he reveals how works about war in the late twentieth century attempt to eradicate inconsistencies among American civilian conceptions of war, the military's expectations of the soldier, and the soldier's experience of combat. Adams argues that these inconsistencies are largely responsible not only for continuing support of the war enterprise but also for the soldiers' difficulty in reintegration to civilian society upon their return. He intends Male Armor to provide a corrective to the public's continued investment in the war enterprise as a guarantor both of masculinity and, by extension, of the nation.