Masculine Myths in Graham Greene’s “The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard”

Masculine Myths as influences and guides to a self-destructive behavior in Graham Greene’s “The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard”

 Graham Greene's Biography

            With the exception of puberty, boys and men’s lives are not marked as clearly by reproductive changes that occur throughout their lives. At puberty, boys develop more muscle and deeper voices, as well as pubic and facial hair. But deeper voices, bigger muscles, and more hair do not turn a boy into a man; he goes through a “rite of passage”. Boys prove manhood by showing they are skilled and competent like their fathers. In the absence of clear rituals or markers that prepare and test them for manhood, many create their own initiation rites. In “The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard” Graham Green introduces his self-devised “rite of passage” of playing Russian roulette. The narrator’s “rite of passage” centers on masculine myths that are clearly not popular for teenage girls. The gender myths of society that influence and guide the narrator’s self-destructive behavior until he becomes a man are aggressiveness, toughness, competitiveness, power and the need to prove himself by a test or challenge. 

  Some of these rites occur in the context of life affirming friendships through recreational and organized sports, outdoor adventures, music and social activism. Boys test their strength, courage, intellect, and skill against themselves and other boys as they move through adolescence. The narrator in “The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard” is a seventeen year old that was terribly bored and in love with his sister’s governess. He states that “at that age one may fall irrevocably in love with failure, and success of any kind loses half its savour before it is experienced” (Green 173). To escape boredom he took his brother’s revolver and played Russian roulette as the men in the revolutionary war of the book he was reading. This game is described as “a man slipping a charge into a revolver and turning the chambers at random and his companion would put the revolver to his head and pull the trigger.” (173). Chances were six to one in favor of life. It’s clear the adolescent chose this dangerous “game” for a reason that girls wouldn’t, it’s about the gender myths of society as men being aggressive, tough and strong.

          Greene’s “The Revolver in the Cupboard” presents a young boy going through his “rite of passage” unconsciously. It presents how a seventeen-year-old boy can entertain himself with a revolver, indicating differences between boys and girls according to their gender myths created by society. Masculine myths are their aggressiveness, toughness, competitiveness, power and their need to prove to themselves how manly they are. Society expects men to be aggressive, tough, strong and independent. Every man wants to prove to society or sometimes to themselves, their manhood. This act of proving their manhood is often done unconsciously but important for teenage boys.