The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

During an interview with Guernica, Junot Diaz described his goal for his short-story “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” which ultimately became a novel by the same name: “I wanted to talk about gender. I wanted to talk about masculinity. I wanted to talk about race” (Kolinsky 2012). The story’s narrator, Yunior, represents the “stereotypical” Dominican man, in which Yunior himself describes as a “player” (Diaz, 2000). Within the Dominican culture, the ideal man is expected to possess a very strong sense of masculine pride and be a powerful, dominant figure, while the ideal woman is expected to be fragile and dependent on men for most tasks. “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” challenges these beliefs by incorporating characters that fit perfectly into the masculine and feminine norms, such as Yunior and Rodolfo for example, while other characters, such as Lola and Oscar do not fit into these desired norms. In the story, characters have to live up to the expectations of their assigned gender role or
Even characters who have the best of human qualities are ultimately destroyed by these rigid societal expectations. Most of the men in the story, specifically Yunior and Oscar’s uncle, Rodolfo, portray themselves as the textbook definition of Dominican men just by the way they carry themselves. In order for men to be accepted in the Dominican culture, one must display machismo, which is portrayed through the main narrator, Yunior and Oscar’s uncle Roldolfo. These two men act as if they are superior to others and frequently describe women based off of their physical appearance by using derogatory language. Without a doubt, Yunior and Rodolfo can be perceived as the masculine characters in the story and they definitely live up to this title through their behavior. For example, while Yunior is describing the various types of women who fell for Oscar when he was young, he describes one of Oscar’s neighbors as being “a