The Women Characters

At the beginning of the summer I had alot of trouble finding a copy of this book so i had to resort to borrowing the last copy from the library. (there were 14 Roncalli students on the waiting list for The Things They Carried). However this has added a few good things to my reading because the book i checked out was written in by some one who had read it previously. I personally found this person to be very critical of the book but they did make notes on a few interesting parts. for example the person underlined every time a women was referred to as weak or and object. They also pointed out the relationships these women had with men and how society and men viewed them. I may not have noticed this with out the anonymous reader so thank you who ever you are. Among Jake and his friends, there are almost no healthy, loving relationships between men and women. Although Jake and Brett seem to truly love one another, Brett is unwilling to commit to Jake. Moreover, she frequently exploits Jake’s love for her. She often goes to him for emotional support and then abandons him to pursue affairs with other men, as when, directly after unloading her emotional troubles on Jake, she breaks her appointment with him to spend more time carousing with the count. Although her ill treatment causes Jake pain, he never mentions it to her and only rarely acknowledges it to himself. He essentially allows himself to be abused, unable to stand up to Brett. Ironically, in this respect Jake resembles Cohn, who stoically endures Frances’s verbal assaults.Frances and Cohn’s messy breakup reveals how little true affection ever existed between them. Cohn abandons Frances as soon as he gains the confidence to do so and finds a woman who interests him more, namely Brett. Frances’s main complaint is that she is now too old to find a husband and has wasted her time pursuing Cohn. She is not so much concerned with losing Cohn as with losing the chance to marry.