This chapter examines the relationship between aggressive and violent behaviour and male identity. Male violence is a significant element in many of the novels discussed in this book.For example, as we have seen in Chapter 1, Giant represents both interpersonal aggression in the clash between Jett Rink and Jordan Benedict, and the history of violence and oppression in Texas. Novels discussed later in the book make connections between sexuality and violence, while others represent violence as a reaction to cultural oppression. In considering such novels and other contemporary discourses that analysed the relationships between masculinity, aggression and courage, what becomes apparent is contestation at the heart of these issues. Differences emerge over whether or not men are naturally aggressive and violent. Writers who expect men to be aggressive maintain that a lack of aggression is explained by constraining cultural influences.

Not surprisingly, much of the focus on male violence and aggression in the period following 1945 was on the performance of American men in the Second World War. Accordingly, the primary focus in this chapter is on two major war novels – Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948) and James Jones's From Here to Eternity (1951) – which are discussed in relation to post-war debates in America about the performance of American servicemen and the implications for American national identity. However, the chapter begins with a discussion of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (1952), whose main character is a murderous psychopath. In an extreme form, Thompson's novel manifests the anxieties about the feminisation of American culture and the related hostility to women that are a recurrent characteristic of the period. The significance of psychiatric explanations of behaviour in the novel connects it with the contemporary discourses about aggression, violent behaviour and courage that are permeated with psychological theory. Furthermore, in its representation of male sexuality, the novel anticipates Chapter 3.

Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me

Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (1952) introduces significant connections between sexuality, masculinity and violence. In particular, Lou Ford, the narrator and main character, is a psychopath with a ‘sickness’ that he attempts to repress (J. Thompson [1952] 2006: 6). This characterisation suggests that his murderous impulses are the mark of a dysfunctional masculinity.