Jennifer
asked:
I'm 80 pages in - - this was written in the 60s for obviously a male audience - - but anyone else in 2019 finding the overpowering masculinity and total objectification of women a problem? Also - - do brothers really slap their sister's behinds? 'Cause ew. I kind of feel like Im reading Gone with the Wind, trying to read over the blatant misogyny.
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Charles Rosenberg
Attitudes such as this are why books such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Huck Finn are being pulled out of public libraries. Applying an artificial sensitivity "filter" to great literature may mean you are the one with the problem...try looking at our world and those that came before us with an open mind.
Kathy Apple
Maybe you should read more books like this so that you can learn something about how things were before "political correctness" and idiot liberal ideas made everything unacceptable. Yes, brothers did really slap their sister's behinds...there was nothing wrong with it. There is nothing "ew" about it, even today...except in your own filthy liberal mind. And as for reading "over the blatant misogyny" in Gone With the Wind...I'll just say, in my opinion, your liberal "education" is, once again, letting you down. You can't apply today's idiot liberal standards to a different period in time. You will not learn or understand anything about history if you stupidly try to "read over" what makes the book authentic. Times were different. Trying to apply today's foolish standards like your silly ideas of misogyny to the years of the Civil War is ludicrous. With all due respect, you're a fool, unwilling, or unable, to understand that times are different. And your remark about Mila 18 being written for "obviously a male audience" is absurd. Of course the book was NOT written for "obviously a male audience". Those are your own limitations which you are placing on yourself. That's your problem. Try to get past your liberal "victimology" and learn something. Honestly, try opening your mind instead of limiting everything to the narrow liberal view. Learn from your reading...don't try to fit it into today's idiocy.
eHead
Funny, I came here because I was just talking to my 75 yo mom and she said this is one of her favorite WWII books. I mean, it's not hard for me to imagine that 1940's Poland was a predominately masculine culture, particularly during war time and among resistant fighters, so perhaps what you are describing is simply authentic. The thing about novels... should we really hold the author morally culpable for the behavior of the novels characters?
Steven Dunlap
Sadly that was the nature of the times -- both the 1960s when Uris wrote the book and even more so the 1940s when the story takes place. The phrase "products of their time" comes to mind and reading a novel like this does remind us that total objectification of women and blatant misogyny (by 21st century standards) are not that far behind us. If you tough it out beyond the first 80-100 pages you will see how telling the story of women who fought the German Army in front-line combat helped to dispel stereotypes and sexist tropes.
Walleye23
Different times, that was the way it was.
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