Postmodernism Analysis

Postmodernism is a special worldview, spiritual state that characterizes a period of crisis. The feelings of frustration, confusion, despair, exhaustion of life are specific to this state. Postmodernism leaves no hopes, postmodernism identifies critical moments that in figurative expression by U.Eco ‘are on the edge of the abyss’ in the development of society and man [1,127]. Furthermore, any step could be your last, there is one thing to do: to take a step mentally towards yourself and have a look at yourself and the world from that extreme border. This glance opens up the whole undisguised truth of uncomfortable and still not arranged properly life devoid of higher purpose and spiritual meaning. But, postmodernism is not just a crisis of

The XXth century may rightly be considered as an era of changing value systems in the relationships between men and women. Emerged in the 60’s in America, the second wave of feminism as a new real object of social struggle considers gender stereotypes, preventing realization of women’s rights conquered at the previous stage of the feminist movement. As a result, many great and different writers set gender issues in the American literary works of twentieth century. When considering the gender issues in literature, we can conclude that there is a lack of masculinity studies in comparison with studies on feminism due to the historical background mentioned above. Hence, we make the aim of our research to shed the light on the image of a ‘man’ in American postmodern literature by studying the main peculiarities of heroes in literary works of that period. In contrast to feminist theory or women’s studies, masculinity study is a relatively new approach to literature analyses. Literary masculinity studies, like other gender studies approaches to literature before it, stems in sociological

Masculine gender traits were condensed into the four categories thereby providing the working definitions for masculine behavior that guided this study. 1) Behavior characteristics/character. In the play “Death of a Salesman” the family patriarch, Willy, is far from the independent, confident, and aggressive male. In a world that values a man based on his job and his income, Willy draws no esteem from his work because he is unable to work. As Willy tells Linda, «I 'm tired to the death. I couldn 't make it. I just couldn 't make it, Linda» [8, 338]. Willy has never felt very secure about his position, but he always presented the image he was selling more than anybody else. For example, he tells Linda, Iwas sellin ' thousands and thousands, but I had to come home… I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston… Well, I—did—about a hundred and eighty gross in Providence, Well, no—it came to—roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip… The trouble was that three of the stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records [8,