In his book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz demonstrates, through the character of Oscar, several of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s main points found in his essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).”
Oscar is characterized by his love of science-fiction and gaming. The narrator makes it clear in the beginning of the novel that for our protagonist, high school was a “source of endless anguish” for “a fat sci-fi-reading nerd like Oscar” (Díaz 19). Oscar is an outsider, the neighborhood pariguayo, lacking all the power of your typical Dominican male that he should have been entitled to. The narrator describes Oscar: Couldn’t play sports for shit… Had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no rap, no G. And most damning of all: no looks. (Díaz 20) Oscar is described through what he lacks, characterized by his insufficiencies and short-comings. Because of this, Oscar is seen as a mutation, a monster himself. He stands as a representation of the abnormal. To others, he is monstrous. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues in his essay that “The monstrous body is pure culture. A construct and a projection, the monster exists only to be read…the monster signifies something other than itself (Cohen 4).” The monstrosity of Oscar reveals and unpacks the cultural construct of the Dominican male. Through the description of Oscars lack of masculine qualities and attributes, we learn which characteristics of the Dominican male that are valued. It becomes clear to us which are the attributes that earn an individual worth in society, specifically earn the Dominican male worth in society. Oscar stands in opposition to this cultural construct of who and what a Dominican male should be, and for this reason, he himself is monstrous. Oscar is characterized by the narrator as an abnormality, a monstrous mutation, as seen through his lack of traditional Dominican male traits, as well as by his strange fixation with his sci-fi and supernatural interests. The narrator states: You couldn’t have torn him away from any more of TV show of cartoon where there were monsters or spaceships or mutants of doomsday devices or destinies or magic of evil villains. (Díaz 21) Oscars fixation on the mutated and unnatural goes to further demonstrates Cohen’s monster theory. In his essay, Cohen argues that we stand beside the monster, that the monster is the “abjected fragment that enables the formation of all kinds of identities –personal, national, cultural, economic, sexual, psychological, universal…A product of a multitude of morphogeneses” (Cohen 19-20) After drawing parallels between Cohen’s essay and the narrator’s characterization of Oscar, I came to the conclusion that Oscar’s fascination and fixation with all things sci-fi, mutated, and monstrous is rooted in the perception that he has of himself. The treatment Oscar has received from others, the labels and names that have been placed on him, his short-comings and lack-ofs, have become his identity. It is for this reason he more closely relates and identifies with the supernatural and abnormal mutations and monsters. His fixation and fascination with the monstrous and unreal is a projection of his identity.
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