Breaking stereotypes

Lord of the flies

Men in those years were either soldiers or employees, did not honour their role as the father
figure. In lord of the flies, while the autor states that there’re no parents on the island that role
is played by piggy’s character. He’s the one left to look after the littleluns, he’s the one scared
that the boys Will grow reckless and endanger their lives. He’s the parent while everyone else
celebrates their time as a free kid.

He also embraces all the emotinos that Boys and men are judged for expressing. “Boys don’t
cry” doesn’t apply in the story since piggy is character responsable for keeping the group alive,
even if Ralph is the one being called the leader, the hero, the soldier willing to face his fears for
the group’s greater good. But he does it out of pride, not because he’s commited to keep them
safe. He only cares about keeping his role of leader, which resembles the spirit of soldiers at
the time

Piggy is vulnerable, caring and the “mother figure”. He would rather embrace his fear and
warn the others than try to blindly play the hero, as many do during war.

1984

Julia’s character takes pride in being everything that a woman, at the time, could not be. Very
much like a man, she chooses to sleep with men and doesn’t feel guilty about it, ignores
chastity and society’s expectations of women. She’s a rebel, a soldier, has the courage to defy
the party even before she met Winston. She’s an independent and resourceful woman, unlike
women in that time.

"I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens. And in the Youth
Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you
can never tell; people are such hypocrites." (2.3.24, Julia)

Female Party members have been brainwashed since childhood about the importance of
chastity as manifestation of one’s loyalty to the Party.

An inspector calls

Eva is fired for standing up for her coworkers, refusing to accept a promotion at their sake and
is considered a rebel. She spends most of her life without a man yet men in the Birling family
cause all her misfortunes. She ends up pregnant, unemployed and seeking for help from a
female council who treats her as an outcast for carrying a child and having no husband.

“INSPECTOR: (Crossing to her). There are a lot of yound women living that sort of existence,
Miss Birling, in every city and big town in this country. If there weren’t, the factories and
warehouses wouldn’t know where to look for cheap labor. Ask your father.”-ACT 1, PAGE 21
Night train

The night train is symbolic of the dark side of life and of death itself, and Hoolihan herself says
that suicide is the night train. As Hoolihan finds out how Jennifer Rockwell came to board the
night train, she reveals her own past in her journal—molestation by her father, a series of
abusive boyfriends, and alcoholism that, although in abeyance, has left her with liver disease.
As she probes the circumstances of Rockwell’s death—the death of a woman who seemingly
had everything to live for—she questions the very meaning of existence.

Mike is a policeofficer, she picks up a career that is generally associated with men. Women
don’t usually have the guts to deal with violence and danger. The contrast between her
character and Jennifer Rockwell’s show how far Mike is from being the ‘perfect woman’.

Detective Mike’s character raises also sorts of ambiguities about gender and gender roles.
Detective Mike’s name, of course, is a linguistic symbol that casts doubt about her gender
identification. The fact that she is an accomplished professional in an occupation that is
traditionally male-dominated exacerbates that doubt, which is exacerbated further still by the
constant and varied depiction of Detective Mike using masculine terminology. Her voice is
deep and rasping, masculine in tone and volume after years of smoking and drinking. Her
attitude and interpersonal skills are not traditionally feminine; she is rough around the edges,
she is not particularly careful about the words she chooses to talk to others about tough
subjects, her speech is peppered with vulgarities, and her work has apparently worn her down
to the point that the most brutal and devastating scenes are simply commonplace. At the same
time, though, Detective Mike does maintain some feminine qualities and habits that can be
found his quotes and actions, among them, a boyfriend named Deniss. These qualities and
habits call any other image that we think we have constituted about the detective into
question, frustrating a facile reading of Night Train.