English

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Institution of Affiliation

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Dominican roots of male dominance

It is evident throughout the novel ‘The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ that huge emphasis has been placed on the gender roles of both the males and the females. It is through these roles traced in the book that it is evident that through the extreme machismo attitude we get to know what is expected of men in the Dominican Republic. The women are degraded and are considered to be nothing more than just a piece of meat. Machismo can be defined as the strong sense of the masculine pride or the extreme exaggeration of masculinity as well as such traits that get to be associated with the males.

Machismo is derived from the Spanish word macho that has the literal meaning of masculinity or simply male. Through time the word has been used to describe the males from Latin America. Despite the story of Oscar taking place in New Jersey, the great Dominican culture tends still to be strong throughout a majority of the characters in the book, and as time progresses, the cultural expectations tend to be destructive to both male and females. The Dominican culture tends to be so strong such that it is difficult to remove the hardwired cultural aspects despite changing its location to the United States. Through understanding how the Dominican culture poses some impacts on the characters of the novel, one is allowed to fully understand the motives as well as the actions of the majority of the characters throughout the book.

Through the stereotypes in the Dominican Republic to which machismo is allowed, women are degraded by men to prove their masculinity, and as a result, a variety of abuses occur to the women without many repercussions. Among the abuse suffered by women in the face of men include emotional, verbal, as well as the sexual abuse with an example of Beli and Lola in the book. Beli was younger when she happened to sell to a man who in return poured hot oil on her back. It, therefore, becomes clear that through the machismo culture, women tend to be degraded by the overt masculinity to which the males have been encouraged and as well have been raised to cultivate throughout the book.