Reflective Essay: John Wayne's Stereotypes

This made her on edge until we arrived home, and she had a cup of Irish coffee as she smoked a cigarette. Once she drank, she relaxed enough to make breakfast. As she cooked, I kept thinking about my dreams. I went to war thinking when one platoon relieved another platoon; the soldiers gave each other grief. ‘Hey rookie, we made it a cakewalk.’ Or asked things like ‘Hey, where you from – Detroit?’ When I saw men with one leg or blood seeping through their chest bandages, it took all the romantic notions that John Wayne’s movies put in your head. After we ate, mom and I drank coffee. I reflected on the mass. It had been a couple of years since I last attended church. I had forgotten how nice the women looked when they weren’t conscious they

Their cleavages were valleys.” “Their legs were peninsulas, and when it came time to land on a woman’s crotch, the sergeants said it was like taking a beach,” Bao said. “They said beach like bitch.” I replied, and as I thought about the army, I looked across the table at mom. I thought about her relationship with dad. I wondered if my father thought of her as the army thought me to think of a woman. The sergeants compared a woman to a piece of land that was to be conquered by pounding the enemy into submission. Thinking of the brutal way the army taught me to look at women, I thought about the women in church. I remembered the smell of their perfume, which floated like incense throughout the church. I thought if I could place my head in the lap of a woman, and she would stroke my hair, I would look up into her eyes and tell her my nightmares; then, I could return to the man I was before combat turned me into a veteran. Now I was at home, watching my mom finished her cigarette. I thought about Bao’s father. I thought about my father. Both men had survived the European theater during WW II. After their return, they began to drink. After getting drunk, they beat their