bulls and steers

Steers signify castrated bulls, which relate to the theme of emasculinity. The two more obvious steers are Jake and Cohn, Jake for his injury and Cohn for his weak character and naiveity.jake signifies the steer that rejoined the group and Cohn was the one that didn’t rejoin the group. But Jake seems to have an independent mind he seems to understand more than the other characters things about the realities of war and life and he paid for this knowledge heavily, he may follow his friends around but he thinks independently however he cant turn his wisdom into anything. Jake is also steer like the way he wants he leads people into the group and tries to keep polite relations between them. But as we also know that the Bulls only want to kill when there alone, and I think Jake has this quality in his narration we see this repressed anger, and Jake avoids solitude to keep himself at a distance from his anger, he’s calm as long as he’s with the herd. Brett is a bull as she is dominant sexually, which seems ironic seeing as she’s the girl, who has the masculinity of a bull. It shows the paradigm shift of the time, where women gained more rights and power and men lost masculinity during the trench warfare of the First World War. With Brett and Romero there is an interesting shift, Romero as the bullfighter almost seduces the bull when he fights it, but he becomes the bull when Brett seduces him and she the bullfighter. When the bullfighter becomes the bull, its seems so paradoxical and corrupt, this shows how the ideals (or lack of) of the lost generation corrupt the Romero. This also shows the difficult position that the lost generation puts themselves in; they admire Romero but simultaneously corrupt him. They travel and experience new culture but they still cant help but destroy what they seek, they are stuck in themselves.