One Man's View of Love: Review of William Broyles Jr.'s Esquire Article "Why Men Love War" “Men like war because it makes them look serious. Because they imagine that's the only thing stopping women from making fun of them. They can reduce women to the status of objects. This is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. That objects need each other, love each other, correspond to each other. This is an additional dimension of feeling that we men are deprived of and which makes war odious to all real women – and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to perceive relationships. Our relationship with our fellow human beings. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. Until death. » John Fowles in The MagusA Man's View of Love: Examining William Broyles Jr.'s Esquire Article "Why Men Love War" That war is both beautiful and nauseating is a great ambiguity for men. In his article for Esquire magazine in 1985, William Broyles Jr attempts to articulate this ambiguity while being rather vague himself. On the one hand, Broyles says that men do not crave the classic masculine experience of war, while on the other hand, he says that returning men know that they have delved into an area of ​​their soul that most men are never able to explore. . Broyles says men love war for many reasons, some obvious and some clearly troubling. Many books support this notion while few stray from the confession of love. I believe most sources indicate that men actually enjoy war in a generally masculine way. I also believe that sources that do not admit this love of war do not do so because of the author's unique, face-to-face experience with the most serious war atrocities. I believe the sources, although few, can accurately account for the average soldier in any 20th century war to which Broyles applies his argument. Combat stories provide a way to cope with a fundamental tension of war: although the act of killing another person in combat can cause a nauseating wave of distress, it can also elicit intense feelings of pleasure . William Broyles was one of many combat soldiers who expressed this ambiguity.