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Without the true understanding of masculinity, people try to claim masculinity with no knowledge of the consequence/price they have to pay on the road to masculinity. Junot Diaz, in his collection Drown, uses the view of many young men to illustrate to the readers about the effect of the false notion masculinity is causing. Yunior and Ramon, along with many other characters in the story, is highly affected by the notion of masculinity. In each story, the characters, after trying to meet this strict notion of masculinity, eventually, breaks down; physically or mentally. It's hardly possible to meet this criterion of masculinity, and if one does, the cost of is so dreadful that in the end, one will realize that they're once again back to their
Style refers to the distinctive form in which a writer arranges his or her words in order to achieve a particular effect such as narrative, descriptive, expository and persuasive, tone is the author’s attitude towards the people, situations and events in their story while irony is a figure of speech which is a contradiction or incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs. Three types of sarcasm are verbal, dramatic, and situational. In this paper, I intend to look at the style, tone an irony used by Junot Diaz’ in "How to Date a Brown girl, (Black girl, White girl, or Halfie)" and its differences and or similarities to the styles, tone and irony learnt in this course.
In Kimmel’s essay “’Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code” he argues that the influence of society on masculinity is equal to or greater than biological influences on masculinity. In the essay, Kimmel uses various surveys and interviews to validate his argument. He points to peers, coaches, and family members as the people most likely to influence the development of a man’s masculinity. When a man has his manliness questioned, he immediately makes the decision never to say or do whatever caused him to be called a wimp, or unmanly. Kimmel’s argument is somewhat effective because the readers get firsthand accounts from the interviewees but the author does not provide any statistics to support his argument.
In the essay, “The High Cost of Manliness,” writer Robert Jensen discusses the harmful effects of having male specific characteristics, such as masculinity. Jensen realizes that men’s actions and ways of living are judged based upon the characteristic of being manly. He argues that there is no valid reason to have characteristics associated with being male. Society has created the notion that masculinity is the characteristic that defines males as males.
Junot Diaz is a Dominican-American writer whose collection of short stories Drown tells the story of immigrant families in the urban community of New Jersey. His short story “Fiesta, 1980” focuses on Yunior, an adolescent boy from Dominican Republic and his relationship with his father. On the other hand, Piri Thomas was a great Latino writer from Puerto-Rico whose memoir Down These Mean Streets tells his life story as an adolescent residing in Harlem and the challenges he faces outside in the neighborhood and at home with his father. Both Diaz and Thomas in different ways explore the dynamics of father-son relationships in their work. Furthermore, both expose masculinity as a social construct.
Junot Díaz’s Drown, a collection of short stories, chronicles the events of Yunior and his family. Each story focuses Yunior and his struggle growing up as a Dominican immigrant and finding a place for himself within American society. Throughout the progression of the novel, Yunior realizes the stereotypes placed on him and recognizes that being white is advantageous. Yunior’s experience growing up both in the Dominican Republic and the States has shaped his perspective on life and life choices.
The idea of masculinity in the story appears in a number of ways. One is that he’s adopted an insulated
By examining the narrative voice as well as the cultural restraints placed on them, readers can see the sexist culture in the novel and that the novel itself does not necessarily advocate this misogyny. Yunior, a Dominican man, is the overall narrator of the novel, so readers essentially see everything through his masculine eye. When discussing a brief fling with Lola, Oscar’s sister, Yunior says, “Even those nights after I got jumped she wouldn’t let me steal on her ass for nothing. So you can sleep in my bed but you can’t sleep with me?” (Diaz 169) His question suggests that it is his right to sleep with her, and his discussion of Lola herself objectifies her by noting only her body and her refusal to use it. This objectification is clearly sexist, but it is a reflection of the narrative voice, Yunior, not of Lola. Yunior will casually refer to a woman as “a bitch” (Diaz 183), which is clearly demeaning, but it is a man’s view and does not reflect on the substance of the women. It shows readers the culture he was raised in, not an actual portrayal of the women, illustrating a misogynist society but not a misogynistic novel. In the Dominican Republic, gender-based violence is the fourth leading cause of death, hinting at the overall problems caused by the hyper-sexualized nature of the country. Sociologist Denise Paiewonsky
It is through this perilous voyage that Drew, Bobby, Lewis, and Ed undertake, that they prove their "masculinity," or lack there of, to themselves and to the society in which they live.
The idea of masculinity, furthermore, the status of masculinity as a preconditional trait of the autocratic leader— regarded as a necessity in assuaging the otherwise rebellious and uncontrollable masses. Despite the perceived strength and “infallible” nature of masculinity, in “Autumn of the Patriarch,” Marquez demonstrates that that these traits can serve to one’s detriment unless there is wisdom and self-awareness to moderate it. He accomplishes this by presenting the General-- a character that is perceived as the epitomization of masculinity, and therefore, its inherent faults. Through the General’s interactions with his masculinity, it is shown that he is constantly unable to come to grips with its power over him, and due to this failure,
The idea for the novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to her one night when she was staying in the company of what has been called ‘her male coterie’, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley’s whole life seems to have been heavily influenced by men. She idolised her father, William Godwyn, and appears to have spent a good part of her life trying very hard to impress both him and her husband. There seems to have been a distinct lack of female influence, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having died weeks after her birth, being replaced by a neglectful step-mother. These aspects of her life are perhaps evident in her novel. The characters and plot of Frankenstein were perhaps influenced by Shelley’s conflicting feelings about the predominately masculine circle which surrounded her, and perhaps the many masculine traits that we see in novel were based upon those of the male figures in Shelley’s own life. In this essay I will attempt to show some of these traits.
In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there are many patterns and relationships present. This story explores the affect a dying old man from shore that has awoken people of a village and nearby to become more alive. People realize the beauty in the man, unknowingly take this experience and shadow it onto their lives as a whole refraining from being so dull. This story clearly amplifies the major themes of magic realism, transformation and men with masculinity.
To be a man, one must be swift as a coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, with all the strength of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon. These attributes are all featured in the quintessential man in Disney’s Mulan, and represent the ideal masculinity for the people in this culture, at this time. Just as femininity has morphed to best portray the current standards, masculinity too has evolved; it is socially constructed and socially perpetuated. Many types of masculinity have been defined by society, including playboy masculinity, 50’s husband masculinity, and high school popularity masculinity.
The commonalities between the ways men are portrayed in American film can be damaging to both woman and men due to hegemonic masculinity and manhood acts. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the way that men are raised to compete to be the most masculine and use that masculinity to put themselves above others. Sharon Bird’s definition of hegemonic masculinity is “the norm to which men are held accountable despite individual conceptualizations of masculinity that depart from the norm” (Bird, 120). This idea of masculinity projects it’s ideals in three different concepts; emotional detachment, competition, and the objectification of women (Bird). Because this theme is so prevalent in American cinema,
What goes around comes around. Sometimes life isn’t perfect. Nothing on earth is perfect, we all make mistakes and we learn from them. That’s part of being human. Relationships come and go but every time we brake up with someone, they teach us a lesson. They could teach us to become a better person or they could bring out the worst of us. In the novel called This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, Yunior didn’t have good relationships because he always cheated. For example, he cheated on Magda with Cassandra and he cheated on Alma with Laxmi. Yunior sometimes loved them but his way of loving them was unique. He was scared to be committed to just one person. Maybe he was scared to fall in love. We live in a generation where we see all kind of crazy stuff happening in relationships. Maybe that’s how society wants us to feel,
Don Jon represents the idea that there is something else out there for the guys, even if they are macho “loving up on every woman” they come into contact type of guy. The idea is that they have to have the right opportunity to come their way in order to get them to the right point in their lives for this to happen. This point is played out by the character, Don Jon, who has his way with the ladies and is presented with another avenue to his emotional development. This movie takes this liberty to present the opposite of the norm when it comes to this type of story line of sex and relationships.