Somebody Like You

Our world encourages the survival of stereotypes. Judgement seems to permeate much of our society and it has a major influence on the way women and men view themselves. Women are held to a greater standard of decency and expected to act "lady-like" in public, which entails a more subdued personality and proper mannerisms. Men, on the other hand, are given a bit of wiggle room in terms of how they can display themselves in public. Yet, with this additional room to be more vulgar in speech and behavior, men experience the same judgment that ushers in a sense of what it means to be a "man" and how that should be interpreted into their lives. In the story "Language of Men", the main character encounters an identity issue while serving in the army. The army is considered masculine in its qualities: strong, brave, and powerful. These characteristics make the main character feel a sense of pressure to be an excellent worker with a successful or worthy product of work. He also feels the need to be respected by his peers. During the story, we find out that not only does the main character feel inept in his military skills considering he has worked hard and still has not been promoted to a higher position, but the character also feels like his peers do not respect him as one of their own when he makes the job switch to army cook. He takes this position very seriously and enjoys the labor, but the other army men do not acknowledge the value of his work. With this sense of disrespect, the main character finds himself immersed in a fight with the other men.

When Carter, the main character, attempts to defend his pride through his work, he takes it a step too far. Although the men at first began to respect Carter for defending himself and begin to appreciate the work he puts into the food, Carter destroys his chances of being friends with one of the army men named Hobbes. He realizes that he does not understand the "language of men" and will never be one of "them". This distinction between Carter and the rest of the men is a good illustration of the gender roles that everyone confronts in our society. These gender differences are depicted in the title of the short story, "Language of Men", because rather than a language of humans, there is a division between the type of "language" that relates men to men and women to women.