Gender Roles In Forgive Me Leonard Peacock

Through Leonard’s failure to adhere to stereotypical gender roles in Matthew Quick’s novel, Forgive Me Leonard Peacock, he finds himself in a situation to be saved. This is a job for an archetypal hero, and Herr Silverman is that hero. Being different and depressed, Leonard was best friends with a popular senior and they ¨[wrestled] WWE-style [...] And then we weren't wrestling. We were doing something I didn't understand- something exciting, dangerous [...] he said if I stopped doing what we were doing he would tell people in a great detail all about what we had done together and then everyone would call me a faggot and maybe even beat the shit out of me¨ (Quick 186-187). Seeing that he is being bullied, as well as having sexual relations with another man and then being discriminated for it, outlines Leonard’s depression because of him having feelings of severe dejection. …show more content…
Little does Leonard know that his “door” he’ll “walk through” won’t be his only savior. A teacher by the name of Herr Silverman has gone out of his way to come and help bring Leonard from his depression by “[spending] his own money to save me [...] It doesn't seem right to make him come out on a school night when he has a million other things to do” (Quick 210,214). As well as Leonard having a loaded gun with the safety off. Herr shows Leonard his tattoos that keeps himself going throughout the day with one being being “a tattoo of a pink triangle- what they used to label homosexuals in concentration camps,” and the other, a quote saying: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” (Quick