{"id":1311,"date":"2024-09-23T23:33:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T03:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2024-09-23T23:33:57","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T03:33:57","slug":"masculinity-good-vs-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/09\/23\/masculinity-good-vs-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Masculinity & Good vs Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Goldman\u2019s novel <\/span>The Princess Bride<\/span><\/i> is famous for its iconic characters. One thing I noticed while reading was how Goldman depicts masculinity in the book, namely how it manages to create a divide between the heroes of the story and the villains. On one hand, the villains are tied to traits of \u201ctoxic masculinity,\u201d while on the other, the heroes have traits that relate to a more positive version of masculinity.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For our three villains Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen, this idea of \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d is clear in their need for control and dominance and their display of limited emotions. Count Rugen asserts his dominance in a few violent ways:\u00a0killing Inigo\u2019s father (131), defeating 10-year-old Inigo in a duel (132-133), torturing Westley (261-263) and almost killing Inigo (344-345). Once again, Rugen doesn\u2019t show much when it comes to emotions, but he does have moments of arrogance and fear, which are both present when he faces Inigo at the end of the novel. With Humperdinck, we are shown these same emotions, but his most often shown emotion is anger. One display of his anger is during chapter six as Buttercup realizes he lied to her; during this fit of rage, he locks Buttercup in her room and then goes to \u201ckill\u201d Westley, both actions allowing him to assert his power. Earlier in the book Goldman show\u2019s us two other instances in which Humperdinck asserts his dominance, one being his \u201cZoo of Death\u201d. The \u201cZoo of Death\u201d is a structure built under the castle with five different levels, four of which are filled with animals for Humperdinck to go hunt and assert his dominance over animals for whenever he pleases (74-76). On page 90 Goldman depicts Buttercup and Humperdinck\u2019s first meeting where he asks for her hand, tells her because he\u2019s the prince she can\u2019t say no, and then threatens to kill her if she refuses again. Here Humperdinck makes his power clear as he threatens her with death to get what he wants.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning to our heroes Westley and Inigo, we don\u2019t see as much need for control or dominance. An exception to this might be the duel between the two but the goal of said fight was more so to survive than to \u201cshow who\u2019s boss\u201d. Furthermore, we see a larger range of emotions from these two heroes over the story. During Inigo\u2019s backstory (120-142), we see his love towards his father, his anger and grief at his murder, and his hopelessness at never avenging him. Right after he offers compassion towards \u201cthe man in black\u201d, helping him up the cliff and allowing him to rest before they duel (144) and towards Fezzik as he tries to cheer him up with rhymes throughout the story. With Westley we are primarily shown his love for Buttercup and\u00a0his despair at losing her. The important thing about their emotions is that they can be vulnerable within the text, they can show compassion and despair, which goes against the idea of \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d. Since Goldman connects \u201cpositive\u201d masculinity with the heroes and \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d with the villains, he also ends up pairing the binary of\u00a0\u201cpositive\u201d masculinity vs \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d with the binary of good vs evil. As a result, the text criticizes the traits of \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d while encouraging vulnerability.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Goldman\u2019s novel The Princess Bride is famous for its iconic characters. One thing I noticed while reading was how Goldman depicts masculinity in the book, namely how it manages to create a divide between the heroes of the story and the villains. On one hand, the villains are tied to traits of \u201ctoxic masculinity,\u201d … Continue reading Masculinity & Good vs Evil<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}