Themes: All Themes
Themes: Rigid Gender Roles and Machismo
One of the strengths of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Loveis that it shows the price exacted by adherence to rigid gender roles. In its world of New York Cubans, many men are machos: physically strong, capable of silently enduring great pain, but also prone to mistreating women. Cesar is such a man, and he gives Nestor traditional macho advice, "A little abuse never hurt a romance. Women like to know who's the boss." Nestor, who is more sensitive...
(Read more)Themes: Women's Roles and Critique of Domestic Expectations
In contrast to men, who are to go out and experience what the world has to give, the role of women in the novel is to be wives and mothers, their lives centered around home. As Nestor tells Delores, "a woman with two children should never spend more time than's necessary away from home." It is important to note that Hijuelos sharply criticizes this attitude rather than applauds it, and he does this chiefly through the character of Delores. A...
(Read more)Themes: Emotional Strength of Women
Hijuelos also questions another common gender role practice. In traditional Cuban society, women always take orders from men. The novel's female characters are often emotionally stronger and more sensible than the men. The marriage of Delores and Nestor nicely illustrates this point. As Nestor withdraws further and further from Delores, sinking into his private despair, Delores goes to night classes at a high school and keeps the family fed and...
(Read more)Themes: Power Dynamics in Relationships
The issue of who is in charge in a heterosexual relationship also plays out in Cesar's six-month-long romance with Celia. Celia is an unconventional woman who is used to making her own decisions, and at first it looks as though she will be able to stop Cesar's grief-driven slide into alcoholism and unhappiness. The relationship hits an insurmountable crisis one night when Cesar has drunk too much. Celia ties him up with a clothesline to force him...
(Read more)Themes: Economic Independence and Dependence
Celia is the rare woman in the novel who is not economically dependent on a man. She does not appear to have children, and thus she has to support only herself through her small retail enterprises. This frees her to act as she pleases. Many of the novel's other female characters are not so fortunate. They not only have children, but, unlike Celia, they are unable to overcome the three significant financial strikes against them. First, they are...
(Read more)Themes: Economic Reality in Relationships
The financial dependence of women upon men is powerfully dramatized in the plight of Cesar's last girlfriend, Lydia Santos. Almost thirty years younger than Cesar, she has two children but no financial support from her husband, who lives outside the United States. She works full-time in a factory making eyeglasses, but has no insurance and no money for anything more than the barest essentials of life. Even though she is physically repulsed by...
(Read more)Themes: Consequences of Machismo
Hijuelos's revealing portrait of the economic reality behind many heterosexual relationships helps to counter one possible criticism of his novel. It is possible, although misguided, to think of the novel as anti-woman because Cesar's sexual exploits so often degrade women. Cesar at his most self-indulgent reduces his lovers to mere objects who are there to bring him sexual release from his emotional pain, and the characterizations of these women...
(Read more)Themes: Ideal Love
In The Mambo...
(This entire section contains 908 words.)
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Kings Play Songs of Love, Nestor Castillo is characterized by his devotion to the memory of María, with whom he had a love affair during his early twenties. Their affair was over after only a few months, and Hijuelos gives readers several reasons to doubt that the love between Nestor and María was really as deep as he remembers it to be. For one thing, the book refers to several uncomfortable moments between them, probably because she...
(Read more)Themes: Machismo
Both of the Castillo brothers struggle to project a sense of machismo, which is especially important to men in Spanish-speaking countries such as Cuba. Machismo is a personality that emphasizes traits that are generally associated with masculinity, such as physical strength, aggression, and sexual virility. The term often has a negative connotation, because macho behavior often entails dominating and abusing women. It is also negative because it...
(Read more)Themes: Success and Failure
The two sections of this novel narrated by Cesar’s nephew Eugenio show readers the different fates that can befall musicians. The first, at the beginning of the book, shows the once-great Cesar Castillo as a failure, a washed-up has-been. Readers can tell that he once held some degree of fame because a neighbor sees him on the television (on a show taped so long ago that she has not entirely certain that it is him) and because the stacks of...
(Read more)Themes: Self-Destruction
Both of the Mambo Kings, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, are responsible for the ends of their own unhappy lives. Nestor’s death occurs because of an accident that could have happened to anyone, a car sliding on a patch of ice. Still, there is no doubt that he had little value for his life, skulking around in sadness and barely involved in his surroundings. The accident that causes his death is presented as a logical conclusion for Nestor who, at...
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