Throughout This
is How You Lose Her, Yunior becomes more responsible for his actions and
starts to realize that it is his fault the girls keep breaking up with him. The
book begins when in a girl finds out Yunior cheated via a letter from the other
woman (4). This is the only time when Yunior gets caught because someone else
informs his girlfriend, and because of this he does not believe he is to blame
when his girlfriend breaks up with him. In “Alma,” Yunior’s girlfriend
discovers his cheating because he wrote about it in his journal (49). Here,
Yunior first tries to deny that he cheated, by claiming that it was part of his
novel. However, he then claims responsibility for the breakup when he says “This
is how you lose her” (50). The final
chapter of the book, “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” begins with an explanation
about how a girl he dated for six years found out he had cheated on her with
fifty other women because he did not completely delete his emails (179). At
this point, Yunior immediately takes responsibility for his actions by trying
to fix the situation. He clarifies everything he did to try and make it up to
his girlfriend by listing “You write her letters. You drive her to work. You
quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias…” (180).
However, even when his attempts are unsuccessful, he still does not blame the
girlfriend for leaving him, as he did at the beginning of the book. Later in
the same chapter, when Yunior is living with the law student who he believes is
pregnant with his baby, he writes about her in his journal and she finds it,
after which “She doesn't speak to [Yunior] again for two whole fucking weeks”
(202). In this instance, he is not cheating on the girl, he simply writes about
how he doesn't like her. Even though they do not get along, he is still trying
to take care of her because he is attempting to be responsible in providing for
his child. During the course of the book, Yunior becomes a better, more likeable person because he starts taking responsibility for his actions.
Although there are times when Yunior takes responsibility for the mistakes he makes cheating on women in This is How You Lose Her, Yunior also blames a lot of his actions on his blood. In Miss Lora he prefaces the story by saying “years later you would wonder if it hadn’t been for your brother would you have done it” (Diaz 153). Yunior admits he is heavily influenced by his brother and although he may be more likeable and good natured, he follows his brother’s bad tendencies.
ReplyDeleteWhen he sleeps with Miss Lora he feels guilty, showing that he does have morals and knows he should not be cheating. However, he says, “both your father and your brother were sucios… You had hoped the gene missed you, skipped a generation, but clearly you were kidding yourself” (165). Again he blames his actions on his genes and on his family for being bad role models instead of blaming himself for being too weak to stop or prevent it. Although Yunior does not seem like a bad guy, he lacks maturity and responsibility throughout much of his young life. He acts without thinking and at this age, makes excuses for his bad behavior.
I agree that Yunior blames his family and heritage too much for his misdeeds, but he eventually does blame himself. He focuses on self-improvement, with yoga, running, and lifting weights to try to forget the girlfriend he was with at the beginning of the chapter. At the end, he even helps his friend learn from his own mistake. When Elvis believes he has a son in the Dominican Republic, Yunior observes that the child looks nothing like him, and takes them to get a paternity test. This experience mirrors Yunior’s own with the law student, except the woman realizes that her other boyfriend was the father. Elvis’ reaction is different than Yunior’s, though. He says, “When I got in that shit in Iraq, I kept thinking, please God let me live just long enough to have a son, please, and then you can kill me dead right after. And look, he gave him to me, Didn’t He?” (207). Yunior only expresses relief for the son not being his, but his friend Elvis who is also a cheating Dominican expresses regret. Yunior doesn’t want a family or wife, but he keeps pushing himself into situations where this is expected of him. He gets engaged, but he cheats on his fiancée with fifty women. He dates a woman with a child, even though he doesn’t like kids. He describes Noemi’s situation as “Normally, that would be a no-go” (183) when he learns she has a kid, but he still doesn’t back out. I don’t think Yunior’s matured much because he prefers to shoot himself in the foot instead of just own up that he isn’t ready for a committed relationship.
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