Codes of Manhood
Character faces death or defeat, but he learns something, which brings out something that had gone unseen at this point. “They are not squealers, welchers, compromisers, or cowards, and when they confront defeat they realize that the stance they take, the stoic endurance, the stiff upper lip mean a kind of victory. If they are defeated they are defeated upon their own terms; some of them have even courted their defeat and certainly they have maintained…” (35). “…This principle of sportsmanship, as critic Edmund Wilson ahs call it” (36).