The word masculine means many different things to many different people. It could be used to not only describe the appearance of a person but also their attitude towards a certain subject. When I think of a person that is masculine with their ideas and beliefs, I think of someone very strong minded and stubborn at times. A person who likes to take control of a situation and be in charge, or a "man's man" as some people would say. However, other people believe that a truly masculine man is someone who is able to let go of a situation and be submissive to someone else. Ernest Hemingway is an expatriate author with very different views on masculinity depending on what work you read. Most of Hemingway's characters can be split into one of two groups. First is the "code" hero. This is a perfect example of a "man's man." The code hero is a real macho guy who chooses to live his life by following a "code of honor, chivalry, honestly, and the ability to bear pain with resistance and dignity, and does not whine when defeated," (Scott, 217). The old fisherman Santiago from Old Man and the Sea and his perseverance to get back to shore after days of being on his small boat with no food or water in the middle of the ocean. His persistence to make it back to shore with his catch despite the constant battles with the elements and the sharks exemplify the code hero. This hero is Hemingway's ideal man, whom every man should want to become. Robert Penn Warren defines the code hero as follows:.
"These heroes are not squealers, welchers, compromisers, or cowards, and when they confront defeat they realize that the stance they take, the stoic endurance, the stiff upper lip means a kind of victory. If they are to be defeated they are defeated upon their own terms; some of them have even courted their defeat; and certainly they have maintained, even in the practical defeat, an ideal of themselves - some definition of how a man should behave, formulated or unformulated - by which they have lived.
The purpose of human and animal confrontation in Hemingway's works was not to show human superiority or conquest over animals. ... In the 1920s he moved to Paris to work as a newsman. ... Hemingway had a deep appreciation for nature. ... Hemingway loved fishing more than anything in the world. ... Hemingway has said before that no person experiences life like the bullfighter (Hemingway, 1966). ...
