Yunior Aggression

Yunior has a very limited understanding of women, his chauvinistic attitude applauding, but the most disturbing aspect was emotional repression of love. Through the book, Yunior was in love with Lola. He repressed his true feeling for Lola, and refused to verbalize it because he did not want to be perceived as weak. Furthermore, he is unable to understand his feelings or how to express them because he is conditioned not to. Thus, Yunior sets himself up for failure, and cheats on Lola, repetitively. When asked, why he does this, he is unable to fully understand his actions. He stated, “what I should have done was check myself into Bootie- Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing

on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive” (Diaz 175). Lacking the insight and self-reflection needed to solve his problem, Lola, ultimately, grew tired of Yunior’s behavior. It is dishearten to see that the recourses of his action lead to the end of his relationship with Lola. Yunior, stated that
one day she called, asked me where I’d been the night before, and I didn’t have a good excuse, she said, Good- bye, Yunior, please take good care of yourself, and for a year I scromfed strange girls and alternated between Fuck Lola and these incredibly narcissistic hopes of reconciliation that I did nothing to achieve. And then in August, after I got back from a trip to Santo Domingo, I heard from my mother that Lola had met someone in Miami, which was where she had moved, that she was pregnant and was getting married. I called her. What the fuck, Lola- But she hung up (Diaz 324).
Yunior felt as if he needed to be unfaithful, and hypersexual to be considered a “man”. This would be a constant cycle throughout his life. Yunior would not fully understand himself until he was much older.
The machismo attitude causes a state of emotional and physical tension, men feel as if they are compelled to “honor” their status when their pride is hurt or are challenged.

They are left feeling as if the only solution to most problems is to fight. Aggression and violence is the answer. Diaz illustrates this throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, all the male characters resort to aggression, and violence to solve their problems, instead of internally reflecting on the issue. The minor character of Manny, boyfriend to Ana, and another woman that Oscar had fallen madly in love with, was verbally, and physically abusive to Ana. Ana confided in Oscar that “Manny smacked her, Manny kicked her, Manny called her a fat twat, Manny cheated on her, she was sure” (Diaz 44). Passive Oscar, who was unable to stand up for himself, developed courage, and stole his Uncle’s gun and the car. Determined to confront him, Oscar parked in front of Manny’s building all night. “He didn’t care about nada that night. His head contained zero, a perfect vacuum” (Diaz 47). Oscar was in a state of despair, although Ana was not his girlfriend, he was compelled to defend her and fight back against Manny. Intending on solving Ana’s abusive relationship, Oscar felt that violence was the solution he needed to protect. In some degree, Oscar felt that he needed to be Ana’s protector because he was her friend and an assault on her was a personal assault on him, and he had to fight

back.