Poster Title
P-05 “The beauty! The beauty!”: Toxic Masculinity and Conquering the Female Body in Heart of Darkness and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Abstract
In Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, scholars read the sensitive Oscar as the machismo narrator Yunior’s foil. However, Díaz links Wao to Joseph Conrad’s troubling colonial novella Heart of Darkness. These connections between Wao and Darkness present a negative view of both Oscar and the novel’s end. In connecting Wao to Darkness, I analyze the text’s and characters’s violence against women as descendent of colonizing masculine figures and colonized feminine ones, central to Wao and Darkness. These connections re-contextualize Oscar’s final triumph as a colonizing act against the women with whom he interacts.
Location
Buller Hall Lobby
Start Date
3-8-2019 2:30 PM
P-05 “The beauty! The beauty!”: Toxic Masculinity and Conquering the Female Body in Heart of Darkness and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Buller Hall Lobby
In Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, scholars read the sensitive Oscar as the machismo narrator Yunior’s foil. However, Díaz links Wao to Joseph Conrad’s troubling colonial novella Heart of Darkness. These connections between Wao and Darkness present a negative view of both Oscar and the novel’s end. In connecting Wao to Darkness, I analyze the text’s and characters’s violence against women as descendent of colonizing masculine figures and colonized feminine ones, central to Wao and Darkness. These connections re-contextualize Oscar’s final triumph as a colonizing act against the women with whom he interacts.
Acknowledgments
Supervising Professor: Vanessa Corredera