How does Yunior see Lola as different from other girls? How does he feel about her? What do we learn about Yunior’s personality as a result?

Yunior has a rather ambivalent relationship with Lola. While he thoroughly adores her, he somehow finds it impossible to remain faithful to her. It is unknown whether this is a product of his cultural background or personal inclinations. Yunior, however, is an intriguing character and also the principal narrator of the novel.
For his part, Yunior is fascinated with sex; he sees women primarily as a means of fulfilling his physical urges. In spite of this, he has a special place in his heart for Lola, Oscar's sister. He sees Lola as a "tough Jersey dominicana." Lola is a long-distance runner who drives her own car. She is tough as nails, independent, and unconventional. Unlike the other Dominican girls, Lola is not fixated on outward appearances. However, she tends to revel in extremes. Yunior mentions with awe that Lola even shaved her head "Sinead-style," remaining oblivious to the radiating disapproval from the larger Dominican community.
In Yunior's mind, it is Lola's loyalty and dependability that sets her apart from other girls. When Yunior gets beaten up one fateful night, it is Lola who nurses him back to health.

She was the one who took care of my sorry ass. Cooked, cleaned, picked up my classwork, got me my medicine, even made sure that I showered. . . . Even though I had a girlfriend, it was Lola who spent those nights with me.

Certainly, Lola is not what Yunior would call his "physical type." She is almost six feet tall, small-chested, and dark-skinned. Yunior describes Lola as "one of those overachiever chicks who run all the organizations in college and wear suits to meetings." However, Yunior adores her; it is Lola's tenacious loyalty and dependability that inspires his worship of her. To Yunior, Lola is an enigmatic mixture of "ferocity and vulnerability." He admits that, unlike other girls, Lola totally confounds him. He does not fully understand her, yet she seems to comprehend him to his innermost soul.
As for Yunior, his personality is revealed in the way he describes his feelings about Lola. While he admires Lola and craves a girl with such decided principles, he is unwilling to meet her at her level. Yunior's description of Lola is almost entirely focused on the physical. To Yunior, physical intimacy is of primary importance. His shallow view of women and his decidedly superficial nature are certainly character defects; they prompt Lola to reject him in the end.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How does Bilbo show leadership and courage in The Hobbit?

Bilbo’s increase in confidence and courage is the defining aspect of his character arc. At the beginning of the novel, he is shut away content in his Hobbit hole, happy to remain separate and coddled from the rest of the world. In the movie, Bilbo chooses to join the dwarves on their quest out of a sense for adventure. In the book, however, Bilbo wants nothing to do with them and only joins because he had been duped into signing a contract. Despite being on the adventure somewhat against his will, Bilbo still proves himself time and again, saving the dwarves from the spiders, the trolls, and a number of other dangers they encounter along the way. Bilbo’s character arc has even been cited as a sort of Christian metaphor for the growth of the soul, though how much Tolkien intended on this front is up for debate. From a thematic standpoint, the ring of invisibility also plays into Bilbo’s brand of bravery. If Hobbits are the overlooked creatures of Middle Earth, then it is noteworthy that...
Read more

In “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes that the “lesson” of her story is that “it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the fair.” What does she mean? How does the final section of the essay portray how she came to this understanding, her feelings about it, and the consequences of it?

In this classic essay, Didion describes moving to New York City from her native Sacramento at the age of twenty-one, and, as she freely admits, a somewhat naive twenty-one, her mind, "programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard about New York," with the typical feeling, at that age, that, "nothing like this...has ever happened to anyone before." Intending to stay for only six months, she falls in love with the city. As she says, "I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again." This initial love led her to prolong her residency, since, "I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month." But as the next years roll past, and the "new faces" she encounters...
Read more

Why does the poet say "all the men and women merely players"?

It's one of the most famous lines in literature: All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players . . . This famous saying comes from Shakespeare's play As You Like It, and it's spoken by Jacques. What he's saying here is that simply going about our daily lives is a type of performance. Just like actors on a stage, we all have roles to perform: Daughter. Student. Sister. Captain of the soccer team. The fact that Shakespeare writes that men and women are merely players suggests that the roles are preordained and that a person's choice in being a mother, for example, or a doctor or starting point guard for the Brooklyn Nets is out of their hands. What roles a person performs over the course of their lifetime is up to fate. The notion that "all the world's a stage" has entered pop culture, but within the context of the play, this idea does not sit well with Jacques. He's a pessimist, and the idea that everything is up to fate makes...
Read more