PEACE AND WAR

OLIVER  KAYA

Moacyr Scliar’s story “Peace and War” is an exceptional example of the negative stereotypes that men and women face that antagonize them. The examples of the main characters’ wives and themselves and other male characters around them all build up this puzzle of gender-related stereotypes and the issues surrounding them.

Moacyr Scliar’s short story “Peace and War” is a story that is told through the shoes of a soldier who has been serving in a war that not even his country understands. The audience follows the character as he interacts with the people around him. The story portrays the role of men and women during a war, and some pretty compelling arguments about the behaviours of men and women are antagonized using stereotypes. This is unmistakable through the stereotypes that Walter and the main character’s wife have to contend with and The stereotypes that Walter, the main character and other male characters in the story have to deal with. The more the story goes on, the more insight the readers have into the main character and Walter’s relationship with their wives. The story uses common stereotypes to antagonize the wives’ behaviour, thus making them look like the issue and not the war. 

The very first instance of the author using stereotypes to antagonize the wives is with the main character’s friend Walter. Since Walter and the main character are friends, he is shown as the second protagonist in the story. The audience agrees with Walter’s words, such as the food being worse and worse by the day, his gun breaking down because of the war and most notably, his relationship with his wife. Walter comes off as a moody person, but his interaction with his wife antagonizes her fear of losing him. “What a pain that woman is… Even here she won’t leave me in peace.”

In this example, the author uses the stereotype that only women get worried about death and have to make sure that their loved ones are ok. To put it simply, Men are fearless, and women are not. This reaction of Walter makes the audience think that his wife is the wrong person trying to prevent the main character from doing their job. Walter’s wife has a case of Thanatophobia, Which is a phobia of losing a loved one, and this is very reasonable in wartime and can happen to anyone. However, the story only shows the women having this phobia and not the men. 

The second instance of the author antagonizing the wives with stereotypes is with the main character’s wife. After the audience is doused with Walter’s ranting about his wife’s behaviour, they get a sneak peek into the main character and his relationship with his wife. The issue with the main character’s wife is that she does not believe that he is at war and alternatively spends his time at a hotel. 

The author uses the stereotype that men cheat on their wives to show the wife as the bad guy in this scene. The audience can follow the character around as they react to the events around them, but the main character’s wife does not; she can not, and therefore has to assume what he has been doing for the last 15 years because there is no evidence of a war on her husband. Nevertheless, the audience assumes that she does know this because they follow the character around rather than looking at the situation from her perspective. The third instance of the author antagonizing the wives with stereotypes is with the setting that the protagonists are in. 

Once someone reads the story a couple of times, they can quickly realize that there is an absence of females in the war. Moreover, even if there were women in the war, the author never mentions any such thing. Furthermore, the generally perceived understanding that only men serve in war antagonizes the behaviour of the women in the story. When a woman in the story says something negative to the men in the story, the audience perceives this as an attack because that woman is not serving in the war. “They are attacking the men who are putting their lives at risk” is what they might have going on in their heads, and the stereotype only makes it worse because it also makes the women look like they are not helping out. 

The wives of Walter and the main character are not the only ones to be antagonized due to the stereotypes placed on them. Walter and the main character, as well as other male figures in the story, are also antagonized because of the stereotypes and their behaviour against those stereotypes. 

The first instance of one of these stereotypes antagonizing the two main characters is in the scene with the trench. At this point in the story, Walter and the main character are out on their lunch break. They are served with green salad, rice, roasted meat and “Tasteless” pudding. Being fed up with what he has been offered, he complains. “This is getting worse and worse,” but an officer asks him if he was in a restaurant, and Walter precedes with silence. The author uses the “if he was in a restaurant” to antagonize Walter relies upon a negative stereotype that men are supposed to suck it up. 

Even after 15 years in the battle, he is still expected to do that. And it is so backwards because it is a natural human right to speak up about things that you think are not fair. The second instance where the main characters are antagonized because they did something against the stereotypes placed onto them is with the main character. During the beginning-middle part of the story, the audience learns that the main character’s son has requested a shell from a bullet. But the main character can not get this thing that his child has asked him because he is in battle. 

The stereotype that antagonizes him is that he is supposed to “man up” and go into the battlefield fearlessly and retrieve a shell for his son. However, in doing so, he also risks being shot at. “a problem for me: My son wanted an empty shell cartridge, which I had not been able to obtain. The boy kept asking for it; I could do nothing.

This negative stereotype antagonizes the main character because, in the eyes of society, he is supposed to go and get it, but he cannot because he has been told was “not to get out of the trench,” or he might risk getting killed. In addition, and partly due to this negative stereotype, the son may see his dad as a person who does not care and is always scared. This severs the relationship between the boy and his dad, which is the worst thing to a parent.  

The third instance of this happening is the background characters. Most prominently with the official who conducts the investigation about the war. He appears towards the middle of the story and complains that his car is not reliable. The stereotype that men have to serve in war antagonizes this character because he is not serving in the war. This toxic stereotype also prevents this character from accessing a reliable tool that he needs to do his job correctly, thus antagonizing him even more for not helping out in the war effort. Moacyr Scliar’s story “Peace and War” is an exceptional example of the negative stereotypes that men and women face that antagonize them. The examples of the main characters’ wives and themselves and other male characters around them all build up this puzzle of gender-related stereotypes and the issues surrounding them. As a result, a simple story such as “Peace and War” highlights society’s deep-rooted stereotypes during war and peacetime and exemplifies how humans still have a long way to go before stereotypes end up in history books.