I feel like John Price would be a man who, unfortunately, was drafted into the idea that all men have to be providers. That he has to be the one who takes the world on his shoulders and gets the job done because he's THE MAN. He grew up around that sort of mentality with his father and it stuck to him like a bad smell because that's just who he is. He gets everything done no matter how dirty his hands are and no matter the blood shed. Because he's a man. He has to be this beacon of masculinity because without it, who is he? All his choices throughout his life were somone else's. This imaginary figure clinging to his Concious that he believes is the only thing keeping him from being some sad, pathetic loser. He has to chin up and keep everything bottled down because if he lets any of his true colours shine through then what is he but a shell of a man with no ties to anything that he has spent so long crafting. He's so set in his ways that any thought he sees as " abnormal " gets shut down and he simmers in his discontent because he's a man. He's not allowed the freedom of choice. The ability to choose who he wants to be with and why. Because he has this crushing guilt in his brain that tells him it's wrong. It's inhumane to want the life he wants, even if he knows it isn't entirely true.
I like to think that this all comes to a head when he eventually realises that, whilst he's in the military, it's a duty as much as it is an escape. He doesn't have to find a wife, or have children of his own. He doesn't have to be the moneymaker for some housewife he trudges back to whilst on leave. He can exist, at the cost of being the face of the team. Being the man of the house. Because atleast here, he doesn't have to listen to every rule. He can bend some of them to fit him. Not until they break, because he hasn't got the capacity to live with himself if it all shatters under the weight of his mind, but until they mould around him and the masculinity he weilds isn't this stereotypical version of the concept drilled into him as a teen, but him. It's his life, as chipped and broken as it may be. He has some control over how he lives
