Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Vanessa Corredera
Abstract
Junot Diaz's Pulitzer-Prize-Winning 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores Dominican masculinity through narrator Yunior de Las Casas's portrayal of protagonist Oscar de Leon's family history. Yunior's perceived virility shapes his understanding of masculinity, which he stresses through the novel's plot and structure. This analysis considers how Yunior constructs Dominican masculinity through his narrative by marginalizing and emasculating passive character such as Oscar. I argue that Yunior's narrative closely links definition of masculinity and power as he strives to dominate passive characters in order to assert his virility as the "best" method for being a Dominican man.
Recommended Citation
Lee, Charles, "Discourse and Narrative: Creating Gender Control in Junot Diaz's the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (2015). Honors Theses. 112.
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/112/
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/honors/112
Subject Area
Masculinity in literature.
Presentation Record URL
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/112/