In This is How You Lose Her, Yunior has quite a few bad qualities, but
the most prominent one is his chronic cheating on his girlfriends. He doesn’t
treat any of his girlfriends right, yet there is something about Yunior that
allows him to still be a likable character. His quick wittedness and engaging
narrative definitely help his cause, but I think it is the fact that, unlike
many of the other Dominican men we see in this and Diaz’s other books, Yunior
actually falls in love and cares about how he makes the women feel when he
cheats on them. Before Miss Lora, Yunior promised himself he wouldn’t be a
“sucio” like his father and his brother. In “Miss Lora” after he and Miss Lora
have sex for the first time, which is also the first time he cheats on his
girlfriend, he says, “both [my] father and [my] brother were sucios…sucios of
the worst kind and now it’s official: [I am] one, too. [I] had hoped the gene
had missed [me]” (165). His encounters with Miss Lora prove that he is unable
to resist the temptation, just like his father and Rafa. However, unlike his
father and brother, Yunior actually feels bad about what he is doing.
In “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars,”
Yunior continues to try to make it work with Magda after she finds out about
him cheating on her, and tries everything he can to get their relationship back
to normal, because he obviously loves her. He says, “Magda’s my heart. I didn’t
want her to leave me” (6), and when they finally break up, he seems truly upset
by it. When he receives a letter from her months after they break up, he
writes, “Magda’s handwriting still blasted every molecule of air out of my
lungs” (25).
In “Alma” when Yunior once again
gets caught cheating, he claims he is “overwhelmed by a pelagic sadness.
Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertible knowledge that she will never
forgive you” (49). He is sad to lose her, and tries to lie to keep her. Nothing
excuses the fact that he cheated on her, but at least he actually cared about
her and was sad to see her go.
Finally, in “The Cheater’s Guide to
Love” Yunior loses the love of his life after she finds out he has cheated on
her with fifty women. While that should be enough to make the reader hate him,
it is still very difficult to because this is when he finally learns his lesson
and tries to stop cheating on every girl he meets. It takes him years to even
begin to get over his ex, and really puts in the effort to better himself,
which makes it difficult to hate him even under the circumstance of the
breakup. Yunior gives the reader so many reasons to dislike him, yet it is very
difficult to hate him because he does have redeeming qualities and is a better
man than many of the other men who appear throughout Diaz’s books.
Yunior does show affection and love towards many of his girlfriends and it is clear that he has been heartbroken more than once even though he cheated on almost every girlfriend he has had. However, I believe many of the reasons it is hard to dislike him come from pity and his redeeming qualities, rather than how he responds to women. It is obvious Yunior has not had an easy life. He lost his brother, his father was only in his life for a short time and when he was he was a terrible, mean father.
ReplyDeleteHow he values his life is also very notable and worthy. In his attempts to move on from his ex, Yunior begins to get in shape again. He tries running, then yoga when that fails, then walking and push-ups when that fails as well. It is admirable how much energy he is able to focus onto bettering himself when he is not chasing girls. He also begins writing again when he “finally start[s] work on [his] eighties apocalypse novel – ‘finally starting’ means you write one paragraph” (193). Although it is a slow start, it shows that Yunior is making an effort to make something of his life and he keeps this attitude until the end. In the fifth year after the break up he’s “working harder than [he’s] ever worked at everything – the teaching, [his] physical therapy, [his] regular therapy, [his] reading, [his] walking” (214). Yunior’s perseverance with activities besides women is what really makes him stand out among Dominican men and as a respectable person.
I don’t believe that Yunior’s redeeming qualities are entirely due to pity. He doesn’t have very many because he did cheat on his fiancée with fifty women and admits that he’s one of those “sucios of the worst kind” (165) along with his father and brother. Yunior’s redeeming qualities are mostly due to his humor and storytelling skill, along with his attitude to life. His father leaves, his brother dies, and he has to give up running and then yoga due to physical injury. But, like Lauren said, he is extremely focused on self-improvement once he decides to get over the breakup and tries to become a better person, and doesn’t let the obstacles in his life prevent him from being successful. By the time of “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” Yunior has become a college professor and has escaped the poverty that plagued the rest of the Dominicans he writes about. His success with leaving the poverty of the Dominican Republic and of the immigrant life gives the reader hope that he may also be able to escape the cultural attitudes of the Dominican Republic. However, though Yunior seems to be making an effort and claims to be getting better, I find it doubtful that he’ll ever stop cheating.
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