Critical Theory

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Desire
Introduction
Desire refers to having the urge to get something or to have something for a specific need or use. It usually involves an inner feeling of want. In the novel, the author has managed to bring about the theme of desire in several instances. This is a theme that is common to most of the main characters in the novel and it comes out very clearly. In this section we are going to explore some aspects of the novel`s treatment of desire and sexuality and the role it plays in the lives of the main characters. In Díaz's Dominican Republic, and in the immigrant neighborhoods in which Oscar, Lola and Yunior grow up, women are things, objects of desire, whose worth is measured solely by their attractiveness to men. And they all buy into it. The internalized racism on display in the novel is scary (Oscar's dark-skinned mother is self-conscious of her skin color, and as a girl will only date light-skinned boys), but not nearly as terrifying as the internalized misogyny that every single female character--even the indefatigable Lola--drinks down with her mother's milk. Oscar, fat and unattractive, at least survives his childhood, but when a neighborhood girl is similarly afflicted, she goes crazy with self-hatred. Nearly every female character in the novel has a boyfriend who slaps her around, and to whom she goes back again and again. Not a single one of them seems to consider that she doesn't need a man in her life. The seeds of Oscar's family's downfall are sown when the dictator Trujillo hears of the beauty of their eldest daughter, whom Oscar's grandfather refuses to make available to him. And, of course, there's the defining characteristic of the Dominican male--his promiscuity. "It's against the laws of nature for a dominicano to die without fucking at least once," Yunior tells Oscar.
There are some quotes in the novel that brings about the concept of desire quite clearly. "[Belicia], like her yet to be born daughter, would come to exhibit a particularly Jersey malaise—the inextinguishable longing for elsewhere." (p. 77). Both Belicia and Lola desire escape—but that desire is "inextinguishable." So even when they are able to escape (as both of them are on a few occasions), they are still not satisfied. The narrator describes this feeling as being "particularly Jersey" in reference to the state of New Jersey, where Belicia and Lola spend most of their lives. Describing the malaise as "Jersey" universalizes it, presuming that Lola and Belicia are not the only ones in New Jersey who feel this way. Malaise means an uneasiness or discomfort whose exact cause is hard to identify; no matter where each woman is, she feels this discomfort, and neither character understands why she longs for other places. This feeling correlates with the theme of being an outsider/immigrant who does not feel she belongs anywhere.
In the novel, (p.190),...