If you're watching a baseball between the Yankees and the Red Sox, and the commentators are obsessed with the Yankees, you're going to hear a lot about the Yankees. Right? It's sort of like that with sex in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Our macho narrator, Yunior, is absolutely mad for sex. So, partly due to his influence, sex is central to the novel. Plus, in order to fit in with dominant masculine stereotypes, one has to be a prolific lover—a real love-'em-and-leave-'em kind of dude. Thus, Yunior's sex obsession also dovetails nicely with some of the book's other themes; it suggests that American and Dominican gender stereotypes are deeply problematic. We will note, however, that sex provides one of the truest moments of transcendence in the book; check out "The Final Letter" if you don't believe us.
Questions About Sex
- Do you read Wao as Oscar's quest not to die a virgin? Or do you think what Oscar was really searching for is love? Are sex and love separate for Oscar?
- Which characters in the novel experience sex as a beautiful and transcendent thing? Which characters experience it as a harmful thing?
- Which characters use sex to abuse others? How would you characterize the sex between The Gangster and Beli?
- What is Yunior's relationship with sex? Were we too critical of Yunior in our theme summary?
- Everything in the novel somehow relates to (or can be traced back to) Trujillo. Does Trujillo abuse his power for sex? Does Trujillo actually love any of the girls he has sex with in the novel? What does Trujillo really have to do with sex, and what does sex really have to do with Trujillo?