Theme Of Masculinity In The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

In the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz we see masculinity in a whole different level. Masculinity is the main theme in this novel, Junot Diaz uses masculinity to embody the Latino culture but specially the Dominican Republic culture. Junot Diaz uses a language that can be interpreted as rude or even discriminatory towards his own people, but I think that he just wants to be realistic about the issue. On this novel we meet Oscar who is the main protagonist of the novel, and who is constantly being harassed by his own family on how to be a men and how he’s not considered to be a true Dominican. Their definition of a true Dominican man is someone who play sports, get girls, know how to dance and is a really physical/verbally

I think is really ironic how much damage Trujillo did to the Dominicans but they still follow his legacy that he left behind, for example machismo and racism. Machismo plays a big role on this novel because it sets the trend to everyone on what it takes to be a true Dominican man. Oscar constantly gets told that he’s not a true Dominican “Probably the only thing you could ain’t eaten, right? Harold would say, Tu no eres nada de dominicano, but Oscar would insist unhappily, I am Dominican, I am. It didn’t matter what he said” (Junot p. 180). It was pointless for him to insist that he was true a Dominican if he didn’t meet the stereotypes of a Dominican macho. Oscar comes to a point where he forces himself to more attractive to women, he gets obsessed with their beauty and bodies. He lives with a lot of pressure on himself on how he needs to act and approach women, even from his own mom who is woman and call another woman

Cojete that fea y méteselo! Tio Rudolfo had four kids with three different women so the nigger was without doubt the family’s residents méteselo expert” (Junot p.24). Woman is just use as an object for sex in the Dominican culture, it doesn’t matter how much work they do, man believe that they’re superior than woman, therefore they don’t really have a say but to obey man. The novel does a great job on relating machismo and racism, we see how there’s racism on this novel within the same ethnic group of people. The word “Nigger” is the one the set the tone to everything, it’s just ironic how Dominicans denied their Afro background when is something pretty obvious. But again they learned to be this way because Trujillo was a racist himself, he kill hundreds of Haitians because of their skin color, so there’s no surprise that Dominicans were going to follow his foots steps. Throughout this novel I learn how hard it can be to be a woman, because Oscar himself was experience it on how to be a true Dominican man. I think Junot Diaz decided to make Masculinity the main theme because we always talk about how hard it is to be woman especially of color, but man can also have it hard, a perfect example can be