The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao By Junot Diaz

Society holds a fantasized view of what an ideal male should look like. We are shown advertisements that portray masculinity as having chiseled abs and being surrounded by provocatively posed women. Action movies idolize the men that are able to seduce any women that they desire. These often unobtainable standards are stressed as the basic necessities for living a decently content life. In his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz explores the destructive consequences that these standards can have on the personal identity of an individual. Society instructs people that they should strive to fit into the mold of what an ideal person looks like. As a result, those who do not attempt to match this image are ostracized and looked

down upon. In the novel, Diaz challenges this view by illustrating examples of happiness 08and contentment that can be achieved by focusing on one’s individual identity.
The main character within the book is Oscar de Leon, a “fat, sci-fi reading nerd” (19).

He has a deep love for comic books, tabletop roleplaying games, and reading fantasy and science fiction novels. He is everything that one would imagine if one was asked to picture the stereotypical image of a “nerd”. Oscar, however, is also a Dominican. As a Dominican male, he is expected to have an image of sexual hyper-masculinity. He should have a muscular body and be able to seduce as many girlfriends as he desires. Instead, Oscar “couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. Couldn’t play sports for shit, or dominoes, was beyond uncoordinated...And most damning of all [he had] no looks” (19-20). He is the exact opposite of everything that he is supposed to be. As a result, Oscar is cast out of the society that he lives in. He longs to establish meaningful relationship with others, especially girls, but he is unable to because he is so different from all of the people around

him.
This image of Oscar is a direct contrast to other characters within the book who fulfill the ideal image of a Dominican male. Oscar’s college roommate, Yunior, is the total personification of masculinity. He is “a guy who could bench 340 pounds”() and who cheated on every girlfriend that he had with as many other girls as possible. He was everything that society expected a male to strive for: athletic, attractive, and sex-driven. Despite these qualities, Diaz doesn’t present Yunior as being happy. Because of his constant cheating, he is unable to maintain a committed relationship for very long. He is constantly being caught and having his various girlfriends break up with him. Yunior is even aware that he is not happy. He is in love with Oscar’s sister, Lola, and when they eventually begin dating he reflects that he is going to have to “be someone [he’d] never tried to be”() and actually try to stay committed. The end of Yunior’s relationship with Lola, though, ends once again with him cheating. Through the rest of the book, Yunior is left imagining how happy he might have been if he had only been sincere, rather than living up to the standards for sexuality that society had impressed upon him.
Diaz presents Oscar as being the complete opposite of masculine, and constantly at odds with the societal norms that he is expected to strive for.

Despite this, Oscar still tries to maintain a sense of his personal identity. His central passion is writing, and he spends much of his free time working on science fiction novels written in the style of the authors that he loved. When his friends began to leave him for their girlfriends and “hurt him and drag his trust through the mud (), Oscar continued to write. He knew that staying inside and imagining alien adventures wasn’t what society expected him to do, but it was what he loved and that it defined who he was. He used his writing and passion for comic books and science fiction as his way to form relationships. He shared his novels with anyone who would listen to him, and tried to have conversations with people about the games and movies that he enjoyed. As a result, when he did find people who shared his interests, their relationships were built on a mutual interest in each other’s personal identity. In college, he found a girl who enjoyed going to the same movies and playing the same games as him. She “read him all her poetry” and when Yunior comes into their room and finds her sitting on his bed, he is amazed that they are just talking about a favorite author. Oscar is told by society that he should be focusing on just having sex, but instead he is able to build a strong connection just based on his own identity. At the

very end of the novel, he falls deeply in love with a woman in the Dominican Republic, named Ybon. He cares for her and enjoys going to her house and spending the day talking with her. Eventually, when they have sex for the first time, Oscar notes that it “was not the bam-bam-bam of sex” that had been the best part. Instead, it was the “little intimacies…like combing her hair” or “listening to her tell him about being a little girl”() that he enjoyed the most. Even though Oscar doesn’t match the ideal image of masculinity, he finds happiness through connection to another person’s individual identity.
Diaz uses Oscar and Yunior to present the reader with a fundamental flaw with how society imagines happiness. Even though Oscar is able to fall in love, he is constantly told by those around him that he can’t possibly be happy. He is told that the way to a meaningful life as a male is through constant sex and masculinity, much like Yunior’s lifestyle. As a result, Oscar spends his life with feelings of inadequacy, even though it is made clear to the reader that the relationships that he forms are the most meaningful. Diaz raises a challenge to the reader to find happiness in through one’s own personal identity, rather than filling a mold that they are given.