2. This passage from Junot Diaz’s Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao is significant because it initiates the growing tension between Oscar and his love for comic books. Oscar is fascinated by the idea of superheroes which developed his interest to write comic books. Oscar only had a wish to have a girlfriend, but the fact that Oscar’s love for comic books and sci-fi animes was not allowing him to have a girlfriend. These comic books and animes in a way distract him from seeing that what is happening in the world which makes him ill-informed about the world.
There’s a direct relationship between the canefields and violence in the book, there had to be a reason for this. The canefields in the Dominican Republic was where the slaves worked when the Spanish colonizers came to the country, they were the cotton fields of the Dominican Republic. This is also when the fuku, or curse, was brought over the Dominican Republic from Europe as the narrator claims. ”It is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fuku on the world, and we’ve all been in the shit ever since” (page 1). This must mean that canefields are part of the fuku the Europeans brought along.
The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz explores Latin culture in depth from various perspectives. This novel discusses deep concepts surrounding Dominican culture such as love, sex, fuku, gender, and power that shape the characters throughout the novel. These themes alter the way the culture functions and influences the youth into following these stereotypes. Gender, masculinity, and power are very prominent in the novel and often define the character for who he/she is. While the protagonist in this novel is Oscar de Leon, this story is mainly about how this culture and Oscar’s story has formed the narrator, Yunior, into becoming who he is at the end of the novel.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: A Fukú Story to End the Curse of the Dominican People In his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz brings to light a piece of Dominican history that he sees as both relevant and problematic. Within the first few pages of the novel, the speaker identifies his story as a fukú story. Fukú americanus is a curse supposedly specific to people of the Dominican Republic, which Díaz uses to shape the circumstances surrounding his novel. The novel works to identify the true nature of fukú and transform it into something concrete rather than an ambiguous curse.
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a novel that follows a family and its Fukú to and from the Dominican Republic and the United States. The stories involves a potentially non-existent curse called Fukú and its counter called Zafa. There is a loving, overweight, nontraditionally heroic protagonist named Oscar and other equally complex characters like his mother Beli. These characters seem to be continuously facing tragedy and negativity related to their appearance, particularly their skin color. In the end Fuku is left as an open-ended belief, Oscar ends up a hero in the eyes of the narrator, and Beli learns you cannot run from problems.
In The Brief Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Diaz starts the book off by describing a curse that has plagued the DR since the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean. This curse which is known as the fuku americanus will, later on, become a major theme of the book, and will individually have its own effect of the protagonist, Oscar Wao, and anyone closely related to him. Oscar is this fairly young Dominican male who hasn't been very successful in his endeavors, especially the one in finding true love. But one can conclude that the cause for his lack of success is due to the fuku which scourges him and his relatives. As Diaz tells the story of how this curse, the fuku, effects him and his people, he is known to use a crude, extreme,
The sun like a compass provides a focus that permits an object to journey various directions without losing its epicenter. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz concentrates on the life of Oscar Wao, the title character. However, Oscar can be described as a decoy protagonist. While the story focuses on him, he is the midpoint that allows Díaz to explore multiple themes such as the history of the Dominican Republic, hyper masculinity and identity, and the effects of diaspora. Oscar only exists to provide a focus as the story travels in various directions, making the novel not about Oscar Wao, but the stories that have influenced the lives of every person around him .
As was previously stated, "The Structure of Torture" presents the idea that as a person experiences torture, they will completely lose the ability to recognize any sense or emotion, other than pain. Another character in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao challenges Elaine Scarry's contention as Oscar never lost his desire to love whilst experiencing torture in the cane fields. Before Oscar is shot and killed, he tells the two men that by killing him, they "were going to take a great love out of the world." He subsequently begins to explain his strong love for Ybon and how neither the men, nor their children will feel anything when they shoot and kill him. He then begins to explain how he will be waiting on the "otherside," ready to take revenge
The Importance of Rationality At often times one may believe that making decisions should be predominantly based upon what one may feel or desire, though in reality such process frequently results in negative consequences, thus why in the process of making decisions, love should not overtake rationality. When love is prioritized in decision making, it tends to cause thoughts that typically won’t better the situation for those who are involved, while rationality would instead provide the proper reasoning to create a suitable outcome. In the process of making decisions, love should not overtake rationality.
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diáz uses Oscar’s contrast to Yunior to depict him as a parody of masculinity that eventually gains influence on Yunior.
In the book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, we were brought into a different type of storytelling. It is just like lasagna; as we read along the book and reflect upon the story being presented, we uncover the different layers hidden in this book. First, we think it as the author, Junot Diaz portrayed the story to us. Then as we get into the fourth chapter, we understood that the book was actually written by one of characters in the book who is close friend to Oscar’s family. As we finishing the book, we came to a different understanding.
The role that gendered expectations plays in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao constructs detrimental limitations for males while reducing females to sexual beings. The prevalent Dominican males in the novel reinforce an absolute definition of masculinity characterized by dominance, attractiveness, manifestation of sexuality, and oppression of women. Such masculinity is constructed through every aspect that Rafael Trujillo, the ultimate Dominican male, embodies. Through the endorsement of expected Dominican hypermasculinity, females are overtly hypersexualized by means of objectification, while men are confined to fulfilling expected roles. In failing to embody Trujillo’s misogynistic, patriarchal ideal, males and females in the novel marginalize
The Curse of Oscar Daniel Plummer Charlestown High School Have you ever felt cursed in your life-like anything you do or say causes bad luck? Well, this is Oscar de León. He is the protagonist in the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. Oscar de León is a Dominican-American man who grew up in Paterson New Jersey and is the son of Beli, the brother of Lola, and the most cursed one out of all his family members.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was a very intriguing story. It incorporated numerous themes that certain individuals can relate to and spoke upon realistic cases. Author Junot Diaz wrote this interpretation from where he was raised. This fiction novel set up the themes of relationships, abuse, sexuality, parenthood and so forth. The one theme that stood out to the writer in this novel was culture.
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz successfully links Dominican history during the reign of Trujillo directly to the characters' past, present, and future. Using narrative and literary elements, such as the symbol of Blank Page, Díaz argues that it is necessary for one to record history and understand it in order to become a more serene individual. The symbol of blank page emphasizes the effect of the blankness or emptiness of the past which creates a void of understanding in making correct decisions. He presents this theme by describing each character's point of view and struggles- in which many could have been avoided if they had known the mistakes of the hidden past. His use of narrative structure addresses each unique yet similar conflict of the intertwined past and present that had affected all three generations.
