essay draft 2

Jenna Wilhelmi

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By: Junot Diaz

ADÁN and EVA

Men and women have very distinct gender roles in the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The men are meant to be super macho playboys. Any man who does not have sex with lots of women and are faithful to their partners are not ‘Dominican’ Men. Women have two options – one: innocent, holy, and pure or two: a whore. This is known as the “Madonna-Whore complex.” There is no in between or third option for the women. I find it rather interesting that the men are basically man whores but God forbid the women do the same. It’s expected, almost demanded, that the men be the way they are. So, why is it so bad when a woman acts like a ‘Dominican’ man? Why must the men meet this hyper-masculine image? The characters of Oscar Wao on the surface seem to follow the guidelines of Dominican gender roles while at times opposing them.

First, let us talk about the Dominican man. The ‘Dominican’ man is hot stuff. He is unfaithful and proud of it. This hyper-masculine image has persisted in Dominican men even after the Diaspora. It is the standard all men of color are expected to meet. During an interview, Junot Diaz said, “I was surrounded by a lot of male writers of color who have this incredibly bizarre relationship to masculinity. It's like we were all mega-nerds but you would never know that if you listened to the way they talk about themselves” (LRC). He then went on to explain how Oscar came from this observation.

“There's a sense among many writers of color that the most invisible figure that was sitting between all of us was the nerd… And the concept of Oscar, the concept of this poor nerd, the concept of the real version of everything that we're performing against--at least as a Dominican man of color--suddenly came into my mind. This was the pariguayo (loser); this was the figure who shadows all of us in our attempts to live out this excessive masculinity” (LRC).

This hidden inner persona seems to exist in all the men. Even the narrator, Yunior, seems to want to break away from his role as a Dominican man despite witnessing Oscar’s failures. It is because he played his role that he was not able to be with Lola – the only girl he truly cared about. However, he will not break character for fear of losing his masculinity entirely. Oscar has no fear of this because he simply has nothing to lose. Oscar is a way Diaz tries to counter the macho man. He is the closet nerd we all hide inside us for fear that they will take something away from how others view us. Oscar’s life may have been lonely due to his awkwardness with others, but Oscar never specifically says he is miserable. He loves his writing, books, and anime and is open with the fact that they make him happy. If any of the characters in Diaz’s book was true to themselves, it was Oscar. Oscar remained Oscar ‘Wao’ even when he was pressured to change. Oscar was the only character that never put on a mask or hid behind the masculine image he was taught since birth. Oscar simply was and Diaz seemed to try to be saying that there is nothing wrong with being who you really are; just that it is hard in Dominican society.

The hyper-masculinity seems to have been even more prevalent in the time period Diaz is writing about in Oscar Wao. The rise and fall of Trujillo had a big impact on sexual politics in the DR. Trujillo, as Diaz points out many times, was a rather sexual person. “ If you think the average Dominican guy’s bad, Trujillo was five thousand times worse” (Diaz, 217). He would snatch the attractive daughters of the people he ruled over and force them to have sex with him. Diaz uses the fall of Oscar’s grandfather, Abelard, to show the reader just how far Trujillo would go to get his beautiful women. “So common was the practice, so insatiable Trujillo’s appetites, that there were plenty of men in the nation, hombres de calidad y posicion, who, believe it or not, offered up their daughters freely to the Failed Cattle Thief” (Diaz, 217). Abelard would not surrender his daughter to the fiend and was severely punished for it. One must also remember that prostitution in legal in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo took full advantage of this fact. The sex trade in the DR exploded during his rule. “Dominican women have become known throughout the world as prostitutes”; “they are one of our biggest exports” (Brennan, 206). Women were objectified and treated as property. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon among primarily Catholic countries such as the DR. Women are considered secondary to men in the Bible and this is often misinterpreted as men own women (Bible). As well as traditional Catholic beliefs being written during a time when really the only forms of employment a woman could have was a nun/teacher or a prostitute.

Abelard, Oscar’s grandfather, is a good example for how Diaz uses his characters to try and fight the male gender role. Diaz counters Abelard with Trujillo – the ultimate example of the promiscuous Dominican man. Diaz uses the fall of Abelard to show the reader just how far Trujillo would go to get his beautiful women. “So common was the practice, so insatiable Trujillo’s appetites, that there were plenty of men in the nation, hombres de calidad y posicion, who, believe it or not, offered up their daughters freely to the Failed Cattle Thief” (Diaz, 217). Abelard would not surrender his daughter to the fiend and was severely punished for it. Abelard, like Oscar, is one of the ways Diaz tries to show that the sexy Dominican man is not the only man in existence on the island. There are noble men like Abelard as well. The fact that Abelard did not turn his daughter over to Trujillo is evidence of this. As stated above, most men would have committed this horrible familial betrayal in order to gain favor with El Jefe. This was the ‘masculine’ thing to do. Women were sex toys in the eyes of men like Trujillo, and apparently many men were like him. While Abelard’s defiance was not ‘masculine’ in the traditional Dominican sense, I believe it was even more masculine in a general sense. He played the role of the protector, a rather manly thing, but not something particularly prized in this time.

The women however, have two possible roles to choose from: the saint or the slut. Also known as the “Madonna-Whore complex” by Freud (Kramer). This stems from the purity and the taint of the two women named Mary in the Bible. They are the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother, being the saint and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute (whore) who may or may not have been Jesus’ wife (Bible). Due to this characterization, women have been seen one way or the other for centuries.

Take for example the differences between Beli and La Inca. Beli uses her new feminine body to get what she wants and is ridiculed by the other women in her neighborhood. She takes on the role of the whore even before she has sex. Then, when she does have sex, it is with someone ‘above her class’. While the boy does get a sound beating from his father, Beli is expected to take all the blame for this appalling act. She seduced him, how dare she be so beautiful and how dare she fall in love with someone above her! The only reason it was such a scandal is because Beli refused to admit it was a scandal. “In typical hardheaded Beli fashion, our girl insisted that he’d done nothing wrong, that, in fact, she was well within her rights” (101). Which, in fact, Beli was well within her rights. There is nothing wrong with consensual sex. But when a ‘scandal’ does occur the girl is usually blamed while the man is all but congratulated. Thus, Beli falls under the label of the whore.

Then there is La Inca. Pure, holy La Inca with her strong connection to God and her noble beliefs. La Inca, the woman who was able to save her child from the wrath of the fuku with nothing but a prayer and her faith. “Let me tell you, True Believers: in the annals of Dominican piety there has never been prayer like this” (144). She takes the role of the saint, the pure woman with no sin in her soul and the other half of the two choices Dominican women have when they choose their gender role.

This saint vs. whore image of women is not just in the Dominican Republic or even in this book. It is everywhere and goes back to Adam and Eve. Eve is a called an abhorrent harlot for getting Adam and her kicked out of Eden. Even though Eve isn’t even the one who ate the apple of knowledge; Adam did. There is a reason that bump on a man’s throat is called an Adam’s apple. However, Eve is blamed for it simply because she gave Adam the apple (Book of Genesis, Bible). Once again, it is always the women’s fault.

(I’m not sure where this is going to go in the grand scheme of the paper yet. But I wrote it early on and decided to include it.)

The theme of gender continues even in the supernatural aspects of this book. The embodiment of the fuku, the curse that haunts all Dominicans, is the faceless man. It is also said that Trujillo, the real life villain of this text, was also connected to the fuku. “No one knows whether Trujillo was the Curse’s servant or master, its agent or principal, but it was clear he and it had an understanding, that the two of them was tight” (Diaz, 3). While the zafa, the counter-curse, is the mongoose. The mongoose is described as having a female voice. I found this particularly interesting because on my first read through of the text I did not notice the complete parallel, male and female, of the fuku and the zafa.