While reading the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, his Dominican
culture is characterized with masculinity and the belief that having lots of
sex is a metaphor for success. According to the novel, Oscar is an overweight
nerd, who is not the most attractive guy out there. In contrast to Oscar is his
roommate, Yunior, who is handsome and constantly narrates about all the girls
he has sex with. I noticed that throughout the book, it describes how Oscar
would romanticize and have a unique approach towards girls. His ethos for
relationships contains all the elements for a healthy relationship but his
physical appearance does not look healthy. Yunior’s approach towards girls are
often empathetic and misogynistic because of how he treats them as sex partners
and also cheated on Oscar’s sister when they were together.
He might have a healthy appearance, but his relationships with women are not. There are two ethos that are
significant in the book, the first being the context of Dominican culture for
masculinity, and the second being Oscar’s ethos, which is to treat girls
respectfully because he was unfortunately unable to conform to his culture’s
expectations.
No comments:
Post a Comment