The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Essay

Junot Diaz’ (2007) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao discusses the life of Oscar Wao, an overweight Dominican comic book loving-nerd spending a majority of his time pursuing the love and attention of the female characters in his life. His pride which was deeply rooted to that of his Machista ideology exhibited all throughout his homeland of the Dominican Republic began to deteriorate in his teenage years as a result of his grotesque and subpar characteristics to that of the ideal male of Dominican society. The novel offers the ability to dissect the differing perspectives of a female feminist and female machista reader living in the Dominican Republic in terms of who the actual novel is centralized around, how certain instances are socially

acceptable to their own individual ideologies and the overall insight each perspective in terms of the nature of their social environments.
To begin with, Oscar had an overall traumatic experience with women as a result of his grotesqueness that lead to a depreciation in his self esteem and self worth as a Dominican male, but there’s an overall controversy as to whether or not women were the main protagonists due to a large majority of the novel discussing the female characters who ignored Oscar’s presence.

For example, the lack of presentation from his mother, Beli, was further established throughout the novel as it further developed her overall persona and background as to why she was so blunt and brutally honest with Oscar. From the feminist perspective, it can be deduced that Beli was the epitome of individuality as she had face innumerable tribulations to establish herself with a tenacious attitude towards life and ability to freely express herself, which many women are unable to do so. “Telling Beli not to flaunt those curves would have been like asking the persecuted fat kid not to use his recently discovered mutant abilities. With great power comes great responsibility…Our girl ran into the future that her new body represented and never ever looked back.”(Diaz, Page 94) exhibits the perspective that a feminist would establish during the reading of the novel. However, a woman who identifies under the idealism of machismo can argue that the novel is mainly focused on ridiculing Oscar to the point in which the reader is able to sympathize with the thoughts and emotions that he has had to face throughout the development of his life. “....his tío a box of condoms: Use them all, he said, and then added: On girls” (Diaz, 49) exhibits the concept that Diaz attempted to create in which Oscar’s development is purposely meant to be a prolonged process towards his primary of goal of having sexual intercourse with a woman due to it being a way of teaching the reader that he is essentially shaped by those around him. However, Oscar still attempts to create his own path and make decisions for himself that are

indistinguishable to that of the machista concept of a man’s identity being indicative when one is able to establish dominance among women both culturally and sexually. Both individuals establish differing perspectives along the lines of what one perceives and personally defines as sexist or socially acceptable and is evidently depended on one’s culture.
Thus, certain popular ideologies establish certain exceptions from what the minority conceives of being socially acceptable due to it being a more majority-centralized method of communication and establishment that is only keen on meeting the needs of the masses. Oscar’s main recurring obsession over girls and stalking them shows that Oscar is embodying machismo due to it being an accurate sign of him relying on his sexual drive to propel him forward in life while limiting any sort emotional disruption that may occur of it which was evidently not the case. As Yunior, Oscar’s roommate states, "it would have been one thing if like some of the nerdboys I'd grown up with he hadn't cared about girls, but alas he was still the passionate enamorao [romantic] who fell in love easily and deeply. He had secret loves all over town, the kind of curly-haired, big bodied girls who wouldn't have said boo to a loser like him but about whom he could not stop dreaming. His affection—that gravitational mass of love, fear, longing, desire, and lust that he directed at any and every girl in his vicinity without regard to looks, age, or availability—broke his heart each and every day." (Diaz, 23) When the machista reader arrives at this specific instance, they are more inclined to consider Oscar as pathetic and feminine due to it not being culturally acceptable for a man to be emotionally inclined with women and should be predominantly focused on the objectification and domination of the women that he comes into contact with rather than mourning and reading comic books which is considered to be a feminine activity to partake into.
However, the feminist reader will interpret the text in which Oscar is more focused on establishing himself as a gentleman across the majority of the women he encounters and is only pursuing women based upon the pretext of his cultural expectations. He is therefore incapable of making any sort of decisions from himself when it comes to his mundane routine as a result of peer pressure from his family and loved ones. The Dominican Republic has been predominantly patriarchal and embedded with the concept of machismo from its very founding and thus, Oscar is perceived as an inadequate male and does everything in his well being to change the perception that others have established of him. Readers with differences in terms of ideology offers a plethora of different perspectives and ideas that are justifiable to an extent regardless of the bias one may have for or against that specific ideology. The novel offers the ability to dissect the differing perspectives of a female feminist and female machista reader living in the Dominican Republic in terms of who the actual novel is centralized around, how certain instances are socially acceptable to their own individual ideologies and the overall insight each perspective in terms of the nature of their social environments.