He had a broken heart and of course his mother did not comfort him. “When Oscar whimpered, Girls, Moms de Leon nearly exploded. Tu ta llorando por una muchacha? She hauled Oscar to his feet by his ear. Mami, stop it, his sister cried, stop it!
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.
Beli Getting Pregnant The Brief Life Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel written by Junot Diaz, a Dominican writer. The novel, that was written in 2007, is about Oscar and his family’s experiences. It also differentiates race and gender in the Dominican Republic.
Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao expresses different characteristics of the Dominican Republic’s culture pinpointing the era of Rafael Trujillo. The novel is narrated by Yunior a self-centered player, but mainly focuses on Oscar Wao, a complete nerd who struggles with self- confidence and facing the pressures of manhood. Oscar Wao is not understood by his Dominican family. The novel also goes in depth about the different backgrounds of Oscar’s family members, while centralizing in many themes such as white supremacy, fuku and zafa, decolonial love and culture, all of which were impacted by the era of Trujillo.
“He (Junot Diaz) conjures with seemingly effortless aplomb the two worlds his characters inhabit: the Dominican Republican the ghost-haunted motherland that shapes their nightmares and their dreams; and America (a.k.a. New Jersey), the land of freedom and hope and not-so-shiny possibilities that they’ve fled to as part of the great Dominican diaspora ”says New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani. Winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for fiction Junot Diaz wrote the The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as a reference to his experience living as an immigrant in New Jersey and his own ancestral homeland's experience under the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Almost two third of the story is told by an omniscient narrator who is later finally revealed to be Yunior de Las Casas, a college roommate of Oscar's who is also a character in the book , he dated Lola who is Oscar’s older sister. Yunior is also mentioned or seen in many of Diaz's short stories and is often seen as an alter ego of the author (Junot Diaz).
Words have power. They can cause laughter and they can cause tears, but at the end of the day words form a type of hope. No matter what happens words will always be there, will always be something to hold on to. When something happens that forces words to be lost and forces language to end, hope dies with their disappearance. In Junot Diaz’s novel
In the Novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” in the first few pages we learn about fukú which is, “a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically, the Curse and the Doom of the New World” (1). Throughout the novel we learn that Oscar and his family believe that they have been cursed by fukú, but it is really a concept and a metaphor for the circumstances in which Oscar and his family have found themselves in. The first reasons is because of the Trujillo Dictatorship, and how growing up in the Dominican Republic during this time resulted in the progression of life for the family. The second Reason is that because Beli’s parents were killed, and caused Beli hardship throughout her life. It was a domino effect that was passed down to Oscar,
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.
Beli as a young girl wanted a change in her life. Beli as a kid pretty much had everything she needed but what she really wanted was change. She was tired of not having the ability to have her own bed, or not being able to the clothes she wanted. She wanted all of it to change, even in the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, It talk about how “she always wanted throughout her Lost Childhood: to escape” she wanted to escape from the life she called normal, she wanted to change. Just like Beli, Lola her daughter wanted a change in her life.
The Need to Fit in and Belong The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, is about a Dominican boy named Oscar, his sister Lola, and his mother Beli. Throughout the novel, Oscar is constantly complaining about how miserable his life is and he constantly falls head over heels with many girls, even if he had only seen them once. His mother lived a difficult life as, in which she fell madly in love with a gangster and that led to serious consequences. In order to fit in, both Oscar and Beli both think about their sexual lives as a way to feel accepted. In addition, they both intensely crave the love and approval of someone, to the point to where they are willing to do anything for that person.
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.
When You Are Not Following The Traditions Can you imagine if you are not following the family traditions, what would happen to you? As we grew up, the family plays a essential role in our lives. We are able to learn how to interact with the community and the world unconsciously by our parents. They are the ones we stay with everyday so that it is very simple for us to be impacted by their behaviors and opinions before we touching the real society. Those concepts are called family values that involve traditional ideas about what a family should be like.
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.
Immigrants and Will-Power Wherever you go in the United States you'll see a lot of immigrants running their own company, such as a supermarket, dinner, or technology consultant, working hard to find their own path to success. According to Baum Sandy, and M. Flores Stella research Higher Education and Children in Immigrant Families, second generation immigrants have a higher advantage than first generation immigrants because immigrant parents put their children on the road to success; due to their hard working mentality, they drive their children to unusual success. Immigrant parents see their children as capable of many things, so they send them on a journey, much like that of a hero's to achieve success. In comparison, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, despite the difficulties that Lola faces in her family with her mother's and brother's death, Lola overcame these challenges by embodying her mother's strong characteristics, which allowed to her to the path to success. Much like Joseph Campbell said in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the formula to the hero's journey is the separation-initiation—return, a standard path an individual must face to succeed (Campbell 1).
