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Summary Of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

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The book being discussed in this essay is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. The timeline in this novel was difficult to keep up with due to very frequent time jumps and different character’s perspectives. The entire story was underlined by a curse called “fuku.” Fuku was a curse believed to be brought over by Christopher Columbus and had ties to a Dominican Republic dictator named Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, who was frequently mentioned during the story. Trujillo was a vicious ruler who had his men kill, rape, and take whatever he wanted. The main character of the story was Oscar Wao, an overweight, nerdy, Dominican virgin who struggles desperately to find a girl who likes him. Oscar grew up in New Jersey and went to …show more content…

Having a good relationship with your parents are known to have a positive correlation with good, long-term, relationships in adulthood (Papalia & Martorell, 2015.) Oscar was known to be a “sissy,” maybe if he would have had a father figure in his life we could have developed more “manly” personality traits. Since Oscar did not have a dad and had a bad relationship with his harsh mother, he never saw a good example of a healthy relationship which could be the main factor of his girl problems and would have been more likely to lose his virginity earlier (Diaz, …show more content…

Being “nerdy” caused many social issues in Oscar’s life, ranging from not being able to find a girl to like him to not having any friends. His method of coping was writing science fiction novels which allowed him to express his feelings in a positive way. Writing helped alleviate his stress and take away the pressures of everyday life. Not having a father figure could have caused more damage than is mentioned in the book and could be the cause of him being so nerdy and antisocial. A major coping mechanism is the idea of the imaginary curse Fuku. Believing an outside force was the main cause of all of his family’s misfortune allowed him to take away some of the stress and problems in life by avoiding the true cause of his pain (Diaz,

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