Proving Masculinity Through Trial

Both plays represent and question the villages’ dominant understandings of masculinity. In The Strong Breed, these themes are overt as Eman struggles with what it means to be a “man” within a broader community and family unit. Throughout The Strong Breed, Eman struggles to find his identity as a man. His self-doubt and self-questioning is particularly evident and poignant in the flashbacks. In a remembered conversation with his father, his father suggests that being a “carrier,” the village’s sacrifice, is the ultimate expression of strength and masculinity. “Other men,” the old man says, “would rot and die doing this task year after year” (260). Eman rejects this association between masculinity, strength and self-sacrifice. As a young teenager, Eman tells Omae, who eventually becomes the mother of his child, “a man must go on his own, go where no once can help him, and...