The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - Book Report/Review Example

4 July, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz Analysis and Comparison One of the primary issues of the contemporary society is obesity due to its tendency to impact an individual’s relationship in an indirect manner. Obesity ruins an individual’s looks, be that a boy or a girl. In the present age, looking good is as important for a boy as it is for a girl. People’s over-consciousness towards obesity is an outcome of the long cultivated perception that beauty is smartness. Literature from the past or literature of today that talks about past serves as an evidence for this. The various events and incidents presented in the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz belong to the late 20th century. In this novel, Oscar is a character that can not maintain a physical relationship with a girl because of his obesity. (Diaz) has emphasized that sex is the fundamental element that an individual must exhibit in order to be a Dominican male. Dominican male in the novel has been described as an individual that has charm, physical attraction, and virility. All of these qualities have been replaced in Oscar’s persona by his obesity. Other characters in the play like Yunior and Rudolfo are able to make girlfriends and maintain a physical relationship with them because they are smart, and have captivating looks. Thus, Diaz has placed a lot of emphasis upon the significance of looks of men. When Oscar’s mother, Belicia reaches puberty and develops large breasts that appeal to all the boys around her, she chooses to date nobody but the most handsome boy in the school named Jack Pujols. The fact that this happens between the year 1955 and 1962 reinforces the concept that men’s beauty has not just recently gained importance, but has been of significance for a long time in the past. Clare Spurrell has expressed the consequences of obesity on the physical relationship in her article Obesity and relationships. Spurrell supports the notion that people have been weight conscious for long. “Since the 1960s the population as a whole has become more sedentary with greater hours spent in front of the television, and an increasingly automated lifestyle” (Spurrell 1). The idea compares well with the issue of obesity in the present age. Proponents of obesity control programs are of the view that obesity lowers an individual’s confidence level and may put the individual into social exclusion. In a society that stereotypes obesity as a symptom of sloth, overindulgence and a lack of self-control, sufferers are often left with feelings of social exclusion and isolation. Even more so in a relationship, the psychological implications of the fat stereotype can be equally disruptive. (Spurrell 1). Diaz and Spurrell have both maintained that obesity has negative effect on people’s physical relationships, though Diaz has gone a step further by not letting Oscar make love with anyone because of his obesity whereas Sara and her boyfriend, do make love with one another, but their relationship is complicated by the obesity that both suffer from and eventually, they part ways. Oscar develops several affairs in the novel by Diaz, though the intimacy never grows up to the physical level. First, Oscar finds Ana Obregon in the SAT preparation class. He finds her attractive and the two make friends with each other. However, Ana is taken over by Manny because he is physically intimate with Ana unlike Oscar, who is only good in conversing with her. Later, Oscar finds Jenni Munoz, a Puerto Rican girl. He does the same to her what he did to Ana i.e. kill the time speaking to her and never making love. Because of that, the end of their relationship is also like before. Jenni finds a boyfriend and breaks all ties with Oscar. Once again, Oscar is left alone. Break up of Ana and then Jenni with Oscar as well as the breakup of Sara with Jonathon essentially tells that sex is fundamental to the survival and sustainability of a relationship. After losing Jenni, Oscar is so emotionally hurt that he attempts to commit suicide. Spurrell has talked about the very psychological distress in her article. “The physical limitations of excess weight can make sexual activity too strenuous, and the constant feelings of lethargy, caused by obesity, tend to diminish a persons sex drive too” (Spurrell 2). Spurrell ends her article with some extremely useful pieces of advice for improving the sexual relationship of couples in which either or both of the partners suffer from obesity. This differentiates her article from the book of Diaz in which, obesity and its influence on an individual’s sexual life is just one of many themes that integrate into one another to develop the complete plot of the story. Women have conventionally been projected as the objects of sexual significance in the literature. The like of sexual portrayal of Oscar’s sister, Lola and his mother, Belicia in the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is exactly what Youngchi Chang has discussed in his article Women depicted as sexual objects. In the novel, Diaz has conveyed that Lola and Belicia have both been sexually desirable in their respective times. In fact, for Belicia, sexual attractiveness is a power which they can use to develop relationship with the men of their choice. Lola also uses her sexuality as power to escape. Belicia is able to lay hands upon the most handsome boy in the school because of her sexually appealing looks. Diaz has sufficiently explained their physical structure in order to emphasize upon their significance as sexual objects. Belicia’s breast size has been told to be 35DDDs. Soon as she reaches puberty and her breasts began to develop to their enticing fullness, Beli begins to gain the power of controlling men by making use of her sexuality. On the other hand, Lola’s power originates in her hips and legs. Diaz says that when Lola makes public appearance in shorts, she can stop traffic. Likewise, Yunior uses hyperbolic descriptions while talking about Lola and her legs and butt frequently happen to be the focus of his speech. Upon realizing that her sexuality is the source of her power, Lola makes use of it in an increasingly directed manner as compared to Beli. Beli uses her sexuality to seek love while Lola uses it for escape. Lola and Beli’s portrayal as women with sexual power reinforces Chang’s claims about the unrestrained use of women as sex objects in the literature and media, though the focus of Chang’s discussion is the influence of such a portrayal upon the society. According to (Chang 1), media and literature have long been criticized for the demeaning content they contain regarding women. Chang asserts that women tend to bring drastic changes in their diet and lifestyle in order to obtain the ideal figure and weight as standardized by the media. “The "ideal" woman in advertising, especially in magazines, is a concept that has hurt many women who strive consciously or unconsciously to be thin, and it has generated numerous unhealthy lifestyles” (Johnson cited in Chang 1). The annual report generated by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says that the amount spent on surgeries to improve the figure in 2003 exceeded $15 million (Chang 1). Later, Chang says that the sexual portrayal of women is also the root cause of many evils in the society including murder and rape and supports his assertions with the citation of numeric statistics from various reliable resources. “Visual literacy is one way to make this country more democratic and equal by changing the notions of women as passive objects” (Dines cited in Chang 2). Another important yet hidden theme of the novel is the effects of parental immigration upon the children and their continuous search for identity and belongingness. In the novel, Oscar is socially outcast just like an immigrant. Belicia is shown as an immigrant who connects the Dominican Republic with US, but her children can not escape the influence of that diasporic movement. The three of them i.e. Oscar, Lola, and Belicia are in constant search of the place where they belong. This is indeed, the biggest drawback of immigration and is the fundamental reason why many people tend to live with low standard of living but do not immigrate. Immigration has frequently been realized as a practice that rips off the real identity of an individual and he/she becomes suspended between the original culture and the culture he/she moves into. Immigration does bring many positive changes in the life of the immigrants, but this is achieved as a result of the compromise upon self identity. Racism is one of the biggest issues of the multicultural societies and the foreigners have to live with it in order to earn more than what they did in their home countries and enjoy a good standard of living. Nonetheless, many can not truly relate to the new culture despite having spent the whole life in it. Works Cited: Chang, Youngchi. “Women depicted as sexual objects.” 2005. Web. 4 July 2011. . Diaz, Junot. The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Riverhead Books, 2007. Print. Spurrell, Clare. “Obesity and relationships.” 2011. Web. 4 July 2011. . Read More