Oscar Wao Analysis

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In Junot Diaz’s book The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the author shows the synergistic bond between love and sex to be fractured in Dominican culture. The effect of Rafael Trujillo’s 31-year dictatorship discouraged softer emotions such as love and pressured the public to behave animalistic in his image. This was accomplished through extended violent and harassing treatment of the Dominican people by Trujillo, and scars Dominican culture to this day. In understanding the impact of such a traumatizing regime, culture can be as a bi-product of governing methods and an opening for new social analysis. As Diaz describes in his book, sexual prowess earns Dominican men higher social status which in turn brings them power and respect, as …show more content…
Oscar’s nerdiness and low self-esteem inhibits his sexual activity through life. When he approaches sexual prospect with romance, his hopes are unmet. For instance, his high school heartthrob, Ana, turned out to have a boyfriend. His terrible fortune led to prolonged depression and lack of purpose. He lay at the bottom of the Dominican social pyramid, and because of this he had to rely on fantasies and life dreams to find meaning. Much of his adult life involved becoming the “Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien” while he supported himself with an unfulfilling substitute teacher position. His society’s view of him destroyed his self-image, and led him down a path devoid of happiness. Although Oscar did find his way to peace, finally having sex with Ybon shortly before his murder, his life was not a story of redemption, but pity. Those close to him were devastated by his death because they knew how far he was from satisfaction. Dominican culture’s heavy pressure on sexual accomplishment removed all vocation from Oscar at an early age, proving how this social norm can debilitate any Dominican that does not