Frank attempts to form his black masculinity in many traditional ways, such as war attendance and brotherhood, but they end up disappointing him. Conventionally, black men are illustrated as absent from or violent to their family. In a family without a man, children learn the image of a man from the mass media which, instead of family-caring black male characters, represent black male characters mainly as villains or subordinates to white men (Collins 149-80). As a result, black boys learn the irresponsible or violent image of a black man from the media (hooks,
“Representation” 127-33, We Real Cool 26). Frank, in a family which parents are absent for all-day-long work, lacks a paternal model for the formation of his masculinity in his childhood. Moreover, Frank’s masculinity is emasculated by a series of traumas: his childhood trauma at the horse scene, the segregated South in the 1950s, the PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) from the Korean War and his
regretful sexual encounter with the Korean girl. Frank attempts to re-form his masculinity by relating to other men and attending war. However, the attempts to re-form his masculinity do nothing but further traumatize him. To re-form an identity, it is important to have a home connected to the past memories. As Schreiber states, “[a]
concept of home as connected to memory and nostalgia functions to fulfill a lack and helps form a sense of self by providing the past and positive self-concept” (27).
Hence, when Frank returns home with Cee, he is able to face the traumatic past and to re-form his masculinity.
In the beginning, the traumas of race, childhood, war and sex abate Frank’s masculinity. Only when Frank returns to his hometown to face all these traumas with Cee, who connects Frank to the community, can he redefine and re-form his
masculinity. The racial trauma at the horse scene, at the first place, associates his masculinity with his traumatic memory. When Frank is little, Cee and he peep on black “men treated like dog-fights” from the brush. With the awareness of the danger, he swears to protect Cee with all his efforts. It is the first time he is aware of his role as Cee’s protector. Traumatic as the scene is, the thought of protecting Cee firstly forms Frank’s masculinity associated with his love for his sister. Facing the life-threatening scene, he focuses on the beautiful and brutal horses standing near the dog-fight men like a man because it is vital to have strength and masculinity, which in the scene are represented by the horses. The image of the horse standing beautifully and brutally influences Frank’s identification of masculinity as he emphasizes the bravery
and beauty of men later. Although the horse scene is the first time when Frank is aware of his masculinity, the image of brutality and bravery, which is also a de-formed black masculinity, has a negative influence on Frank’s black masculinity.
Hence, his protective, and also brutal and beautiful, masculinity, which is projected on the horse, is firstly formed at the traumatic scene.
In Frank and Cee’s childhood, Lotus is a place filled with painful memories because of their dysfunctional family. First, their step-grandmother, Lenore, mistreats them. In the third-person narrative, Cee recalls her traumatic childhood: “[a] mean grandmother is one of the worst things a girl could have” because Lenore forces them to do heavy work and is mean to them (43). Only Frank, who wipes Cee’s tears away, can support her and console her painful childhood. After Frank leaves Lotus for the Korean War, Cee is so fragile that she is cajoled by Prince to elope with him. After that, she dares not go back home. Frank, on the other hand, refuses to return to Lotus, where he has no good memories. He claims Lotus is “the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield” since there is no future and no goal in Lotus (83). Cee agrees with Frank about the hopelessness of Lotus as she regrets that there is not enough education for the children in Lotus. For Frank, learning to be a man,
moreover, is a thing he is unable to do in Lotus. In Frank’s childhood, his father who works all day long shares little time with Frank, and his grandfather cares about nothing but his meal. The absence of good paternal models in Frank’s childhood forces him to learn to be a man in his own experience. Although the hospitality of the neighbors in Lotus makes the Moneys stay, it is not attractive enough for Frank and Cee to return. In the third-person narrative, the helping neighbors are
well-illustrated—“[t]he Moneys had enough of it to feel at home in this place where neighbors could finally offer their friendship instead of pity. Everybody in the neighborhood, except for Lenore, was stern but quickly open-handed” (46). The
kindness of the neighbors, however, is unable to reduce Frank and Cee’s aversion to Lotus. Only the idea of saving the dying Cee can make him feel the benevolence of the community as Frank’s first-person narrative declares that “only my sister in trouble could force me to even think about going in that direction” (84). It is illustrated that Lotus becomes a loving place as the cordial neighbors forgive the mean Lenore by helping her with food and caring when she has a stroke. Back to Lotus, Frank gradually finds the beauty of Lotus and he modifies the hopelessness of Lotus in his memory by thinking that “like all hard labor, picking cotton broke the body but freed the mind for dreams of vengeance, images of illegal pleasure—even ambitious schemes of escape” (119). As a result, Lotus, a hopeless, or even traumatic, place for little Frank and Cee, transforms into a place called home when Frank and Cee come back together to build a family with love.
In addition to the lack of paternal figures in his traumatic childhood, attending war is another important process for the formation of Frank’s masculinity. The idea of leaving the hopeless Lotus and re-forming masculinity nudges Frank to join the Korean War. In an interview with Bollen, Morrison admits that attending a war is a way for men to show their masculinity because it is a proof of masculinity with the exhibition of men’s physical strength that would be praised by the nation (41). In the war, killing is a performance of men’s braveness as it is demonstrated that “[t]he veterans ranked battles and wars according to loss numbers [. . .]. The more [they]
killed, the braver the warriors, not the stupider the commanders” (136). However, black men don’t gain more attention after a war: they don’t get the respect from the society and their appeals are neglected after the war (hooks We Real Cool 48). Like other black men returning from a war, Frank is still struggling with the racial inequality around him, such as the segregating curtain in the train, despite his contribution in the war. The Korean War, in fact, is not merely unhelpful but
traumatic in the formation of Frank’s masculinity. Frank thinks the Korean War
“changed him” because of the death of his friends in the war. In the battlefield, Frank notices that
[He] had not been brave before. He had simply done what he was told and what was necessary. He even felt nervous after a kill. Now he was reckless, lunatic, firing, dodging the scattered parts of men. [. . .] Now, with Mike gone, he was brave, whatever that meant. [. . .]The copper smell of blood no longer sicken him; it gave him appetite. (98)
The loss of his homeboys nurtures Frank’s lunatic braveness, which even destroys his life since “[f]or months only alcohol dispersed his best friends, the hovering dead he could no longer hear, talk to, or laugh with” (99). Traumatized by the war, Frank wants nothing but staying alive. The haunting memory of the war affects his relationship with his lover: it frustrates Lily that Frank refuses to see a movie after seeing the war movie He Ran All the Way. Hence, instead of affirming Frank’s masculinity, the Korean War deteriorates Frank’s relationship with women.
In the Korean War, sexuality is another masculine performance which frustrates Frank. As bell hooks declares, sexual dominance on others affirms black men’s power. Frank’s sexual intercourse with the Korean girl, however, is not simply a sexual dominance to prove Frank’s masculinity. First of all, Frank is ashamed that the Korean girl gives him orgasm as Frank’s first-person narrative shouts that “[h]ow could I let her live after she took me down to a place I didn’t know was in me?” (134).
Staples indicates “the sexual conquest of women was considered a masculine trait.
Since other symbols of masculinity have been denied them in the society, sexual prowess became a partial substitute for achievement in other areas” (81). The sexual intercourse with the Korean girl is expected to be Frank’s sexual conquest of her;
however, Frank’s orgasm is more like a sense of guilt than a sexual conquest. He even
questions “[w]hat type of man is that?” (134). Frank’s sense of guilt and regret for the sexual intercourse with the Korean girl is because she reminds him of Cee, whom he protects. In Frank’s description, the Korean girl is associated with his sister as he states “I remember smiling. Reminded me of Cee [. . .]” (94). When the girl is shot, Frank thinks of the parents who “[die] to defend their children,” which is the role he plays in the horse scene with Cee (95). Associating the Korean girl with Cee when she is shot, Frank feels that hurting the girl violates his role as a protector of Cee, which arouses his sense of guilt. The death of the girl becomes an inerasable wound in Frank’s mind which drives him crazy whenever he thinks of the war. The multiple meanings of the sexual intercourse with the Korean girl, hence, become another war trauma for Frank. Cee is also regretful for being unable to bear a baby. Frank’s trauma of the Korean girl and Cee’s pain for her infertility are transformed into a ghost: the ghost Cee regards as her unborn baby, therefore, is the ghost of the Korean girl for Frank. For Frank, rescuing Cee and supporting her in a family are the salvations to Frank. For Cee, being an independent woman supporting a family with Frank is the solution to her incomplete self caused by her infertility since cooperating with Frank means being complete in a family. After their pains are both comforted in their cooperation, they are able to form a family. To exorcize the ghost, hence, requires both the healing of Cee’s pain for her infertility and Frank’s guilt of shooting the Korean girl.
In Frank’s childhood, there is no good model for him to learn how to be a man.
Frank not merely fails to form masculinity but is traumatized by the war and sexual intercourse which are traditionally regarded as ways to affirm masculinity.
Additionally, Frank fails to recognize his masculinity is de-formed with the help of the men in his journey although a relation with other men is conventionally
considered essential for men’s masculinity-formation. As Staples indicates, men’s
friendship is more about working and playing together instead of confessing because, in the patriarchal society, it is embarrassing for men to reveal their pain to other men.
Men’s friendship, which conventionally emphasizes working together instead of talking together, forms a brotherhood focusing more on physical than psychological supporting. Just like many brotherhoods, Frank is helped by the men in his journey to the South materially, but his trauma is hidden. Firstly, Reverend John Locke provides Frank with shelter when Frank escapes from the hospital. Subtly named John Locke, the minister is associated with the philosopher of liberalism and he liberates Frank from the dilemma and fulfills all Frank’s basic needs: without any hesitation, Locke invites the trembling Frank home and seems to understand all Frank’s needs. In spite of the material support, Frank’s brotherhood with Locke is the first stage of fulfilling basic needs. Billy, another man who materially supports Frank, provides him with clothes. When Frank is with Billy, his military medal is revealed and praised. It is the first time that Frank is aware of his masculinity. The development of the masculinity of Billy’s boy, Thomas, resembles Frank’s. Although Thomas loses his arm in a riot, which disallows him from pursuing masculinity through physical strength, he tries to affirm his masculinity by his math achievement. When Frank asks Thomas what he wants to be in the future, Thomas only replies “a man,” which parallels Frank’s pursuit for masculinity (33). Although Frank receives more than basic needs from Billy, Frank’s formation of masculinity requires the healing of his traumas, which is unprovided by his brotherhood with Billy. Cee, on the other hand, is the only one who can heal Frank’s traumas because of their shared pain in their childhood and also because of the caring and protective role Frank has played since the birth of Cee. With Cee, Frank’s family-supporting masculinity is affirmed. As a real man, his
relationship with other men changes: he is able to understand and revisit the traumatic horse scene with Cee. He, now, is brave enough to learn the racial trauma of the
dog-fight men from Salem and his friends, which proves that Frank’s brotherhood is not just supporting materially in his journey but also sharing the same racial trauma. The child Frank, fearing to witness the horrible scene, merely feels that defending Cee is important. When he revisits the horse scene, he realizes that a man needs to protect his beloved family and to face the racial trauma bravely. Thus, Frank’s relationship with Cee allows him to form a complete masculinity since she connects Frank to the community, including the brotherhood.
As the above shows, Frank has been traumatized since his childhood. The traumas stop him from forming his masculinity in traditional ways, such as attending war, having sexual intercourse and learning from other men and none can heal him and aid his re-formation of masculinity. Instead, it is women that play the essential role in his re-formation of black masculinity.