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The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

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The novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, written by Junot Diaz, introduces a Dominican family. One of the members of this family and main characters of the story is Oscar Wao. Although the story introduces Oscar as a “lady’s man”— having not one, but two girlfriends—Oscar eventually gravitates towards the polar end on the masculinity spectrum of machismo; as he matures he becomes a fat, awkward, and nerdy adolescent with few friends and is of little to no interest to girls. Whilst the fact that girls do not have in interest in Oscar, Oscar has a very big interest in girls; he longs to feel loved and craves intimacy. Aside from his love for girls, the unreal worlds of sci-Fi and fantasy are another intimate love of Oscar Wao’s. These …show more content…

He relies heavily on receiving love from women due to the fact he did not receive much love from his mother. However Oscar is unable to cope with the separation of these women peacefully. For example, Oscar’s separation with Maritza leads him into a downward spiral, smacking into depression at the bottom. NIH reports many of the same symptoms of depression which Oscars portrays in the novel. Some of these symptoms include an “empty” mood, hopelessness, irritability, inability to control negative thoughts, weight changes, and thoughts of death or suicide (NIH). Oscar gained a decent amount of weight following his breakup with Maritza. Prior to this, he was an outcast. Following this, he was an even greater outcast—sometimes even outcasted by his own family—leaving Oscar feeling hopeless and helpless. Arguably there are moments where Oscar is happy in the story. However, his behavior describes having Atypical Depression. Atypical Depression is described as having a fluctuation in mood in response to positive events—in Oscar’s case the positive event is having a girlfriend (NIH). This explains why he falls in love so suddenly; he yearns to feel needed and loved by someone. Sadly, this influences the upcoming breakups he has with women for the remainder of his

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The scene described on pages 143-152 of Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a horrific one, yet it is essential to the novel due to its power and its effective use of language. In the pages listed, there is are descriptions of La Inca praying for Belicia and the two Elvises beating Belicia to near death. La Inca is able to gather many people together to unite in prayer in hopes of saving Belicia. Even those who were not supportive of her decisions and those who considered her to be a whore.

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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.

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Yunior, the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is portrayed as a “true Dominican male”. Oscar seems to be the antithesis of that, being characterized as the “GhettoNerd at the End of the World”, but the two boys aren’t as far apart as one might think upon first read. Díaz does a fantastic job in characterizing the people in this book, and how they tie into both the Trujillo regime and the fukú of the de Leon/Cabral families. Through symbolism in superheroes, characterization in pop culture references, and historical and political ties, Junot Díaz demonstrates both the similarities between Oscar and Yunior, how Yunior is a tour guide through a long-forgotten history, and how love is the driving force of it all.

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In his book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz explores themes of racial and national identity while also examining stereotypes of masculinity. The book is centered around a curse known as fuku that haunts the protagonist of the book, Oscar. Dominican values encompass the life that Oscar tries to live ultimately leading to his depression. Wao can be a parallel to the culture seen today where everyone desires to fit in.

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In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the reader follows the story of Oscar de Leon as told by his college roommate, Yunior. Although the novel is named after Oscar and depicts his life, the information given tells more about Yunior than Oscar. In many ways, however, Oscar serves as a foil to Yunior, showing the hardships of achieving masculinity in Dominican culture. While, to the public, Yunior is the typical masculine, sexually-driven posterchild of Dominican culture, so much of him is shaped by his relationship with Oscar. In some aspects, Oscar was able to mirror Yunior’s struggles, especially when it came to girls and masculinity, but he is also able to illuminate how hard Yunior struggled to fit in by being more true

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In the opening page of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the narrator, Yunior, defines Fukú as “... a curse or a doom of some kind” (1). He exposes us, the reader, to the origin of the Fukú and what it’s capable of doing. He explains that “ anyone who plotted against Trujillo would incur a fukú most powerful, down to the seventh generation and beyond” (3). For Abelard and his family that was the case, the Fukú affected them so far for three generations. The effect of the Fukú could be seen first with when Abelard was imprisoned, then Beli’s miscarriage, and lastly the killing of Oscar.

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During the 1930’s, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was the dictator of the Dominican Republic. Corrupt Trujillo ruled with an iron fist and maintained control by using the unscrupulous patronage system for appointing people to important offices, discretely murdering political opponents, and enforcing strict censorship laws. Many countries invested into the Dominican Republic without Knowing the horrors that the Regime was causing for the povern stricken people. Junot Diaz was raised in the Dominican Republic’s chaos and a sense of unity has been forced upon him for survival as a result.

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From the very first pages of the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz, the readers are deliberately shown an overview of fuku, a bad curse. It has caused many tragic consequences to Cabrals family; especially to Oscar. He is the main character of the story who is an overweight nerd trying to find the love of his life, but due to a family “fuku” or curse Oscar is having a lot of trouble doing so. In addition, the story actually portrait the darkness time of Cabral's family under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo’s regime. As Diaz mentions that “anyone who plotted against Trujillo would incur a fuku most powerful, down to the seventh generation and beyond”(3), Oscar’s family always unfortunately face tremendous situations

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