ipl-logo

The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

1012 Words5 Pages

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. In doing this, Díaz also attempts to identify the zafa or solution to counteract this ancient course. With his portrayal of Beli and an allusion …show more content…

The novel identifies fukú as “a curse or a doom of some kind” (Oscar Wao 1). The origin of this “curse” has roots in European colonization of the Dominican Republic and Díaz traces it through Dominican history to the reign of Trujillo, who he considers to be the ultimate source of fukú. With its historical roots, the fukú is simply the sum of the effects of history on the Dominican people. When asked about his mention of fukú in an interview, Díaz replied, “For me, though, the real issue in the book is not whether or not one can vanquish the fukú—but whether or not one can even see it…to be a true witness to who we are as a people and to what has happened to us” (“Junot Díaz”). Rather than seeing the curse for what is, people view it as an inescapable curse that has predestined their lives as seen in Yunior’s description of Oscar’s predicament: “He didn’t want this future but he couldn’t see how it could be avoided, couldn’t figure his way out of it” (Oscar Wao 268). The book also addresses this type of Dominican denial by describing it as “common throughout the Islands, five parts denial, five parts negative hallucination” (Oscar Wao 259). This denial is the true tragedy of fukú because without acknowledgement, there can be no …show more content…

B. Yeats’ “Easter, 1916”, Díaz cements Beli’s transformation, which comments on how to deal with fukú or tragedies of the past. When La Inca tells Beli that she must leave the country to escape further harm, Beli laughs, to which La Inca replies, “Don’t laugh, mi negrita, for your world is about to be changed. Utterly. Yes: a terrible beauty is etc., etc.” (Oscar Wao 160). This line alludes to Yeat’s poem “Easter, 1916,” more specifically the repeated mantra in the poem: “All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born” (Yeats 15-16). Yeats’ poem refers to the Irish nationalists, who he portrays as martyrs for their country. They died protesting the wrongs against their country. Out of the horrific results of their rebellion, Yeats clams they were transformed into something beautiful. Similarly, Beli suffers the results of the tragedies of her country’s past (the fukú) and refuses to be defined or defeated by them. Because of such an experience, La Inca tells her a terrible beauty is emerging in her, a beauty that can only be fashioned from tragedy, a beauty that a whole nation can both admire and aspire

Show More
Related
1556 Words | 7 Pages

Published in 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is about an unconvincing protagonist named Oscar de León. Even though Oscar is supposedly the main character of the novel, Díaz made a very clear choice of giving other characters the spotlight to change how the book should be read by his audience. Rather than having a clear start to finish plot of Oscar Wao, Díaz chose to weave in the stories of other characters throughout the novel to give his audience a better picture and understanding of Oscar as a person. Oscar’s lack of presence may be daunting to some readers as they attempt to figure out his purpose within the book. The choice that Díaz makes when writing this novel, ultimately paints Oscar de León as the protagonist

Read More
1049 Words | 5 Pages

“The Mulatto” (1837) was created by Victor Séjour and “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” (1828) created by S. In “The Mulatto” and “Theresa, A Haytien Tale”, both narratives have a revolving theme and this is freedom. Zélie and Theresa both represented freedom by not acknowledging the statutes of life and also revealing what courage is. They accomplished this in two contrasting ways, but both women symbolize who women are. “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” expresses a tale on three figures, Madam Paulina, Theresa, and Amanda.

Read More
827 Words | 4 Pages

Despite this conventional understanding, Diaz asserts that, though not entirely independent from the embodiment of masculinity, the dominance of Trujillo’s legacy was derived from his ability to silence and suppress the voices of his people. Although the content of Yunior’s narrative depict his misogyny and likeness to Trujillo, its form enables him to undermine Trujillo’s oppressive policy of silencing his people. In this, Yunior’s manipulation of hearsay, footnotes, and literary allusions enable him to acquire the transgressive role in deconstructing authority while also facilitating his own problematic assumption of power as a narrator. Altogether, Yunior’s authority as a narrator asserts the inevitability of a bias in storytelling and, as a form of suppression in itself, facilitates the construction of fabricated

Read More
741 Words | 3 Pages

Religion deepens the reader's understanding of what the characters in the book are going through as well as the situation in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo’s 31 year regime. The role of religion in the book In the Time of the Butterflies develops Patrias character. This becomes evident when Patria says, “No one had to tell me to believe in God or to love everything that lives. I did it automatically like a shoot inching its way towards the light,” (44).

Read More
871 Words | 4 Pages

The theme of The Mexican Flyboy is also structured around the idea of suffering. In the story, Simon Vegas is obsessed with people who have suffered throughout history and “saves” those victims out of their misery. Even though Simon liberates the victims out of suffering, the historical events like burning of Jesse Washington continue to take place. The idea of saving the individuals is abstract, as it seems like the bodies suffer, while the souls are saved.

Read More
1341 Words | 6 Pages

Race relations within the revolutionary Caribbean complicated the Twentieth Century, leaving questions of freedom and nationalism open to interpretation. In A Nation for All, Alejandro De La Fuente examines various meanings of race within post-Spanish Cuba, Batista’s Cuba, and socialist Cuba, and how racial tensions aligned with revolutionary ideas. Rather than simply adopting a chronological organization of events, Alejandro De La Fuente gains the reader’s attention by utilizing a thematic scheme. The idea of an inequality, masked by revolutionary, egalitarian rhetoric, remains central to each thematic division. De La Fuente’s work serves to undermine the elitist pretense of equality in Twentieth Century Cuba and expose the long-term effects

Read More
463 Words | 2 Pages

State University, mentions in her critique of ¡Yo! , “The text concludes by showcasing storytelling, especially in the case of immigrants” (Tompkins 2). These immigrant stories, that so many sympathize over for a moment and soon forget all about, are not stories but the memories of real people. The word “charm” is not a word one would identify with the stories of a brutal Dominican dictatorship. Alvarez uses the word charm to show that people always look for a happy ending when listening to an immigrant’s narration of their reality.

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.

Read More
938 Words | 4 Pages

According to Yunior the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the whole story itself the fuku has cursed the De Leon and Cabral families throughout the novel. In this case, the fuku is the villain and the families are the heroes. One major section of the novel shows how much of an impact the fuku has on Oscar’s mom Beli. Beli was the third daughter in her family. Her mother died when she was only a few months old and her father was never seen by her.

Read More
513 Words | 3 Pages

In Cesar Vallejo’s poem, “Los Heraldos de Negros”, in English called “The Black Heralds”, themes of God, children, love, and tragic consciousness emerge. My aim here is to examine another important source of his meaning, which is how the speaker sees God’s role in his encounters with life’s struggles. In the poem, a hateful God replaces a merciful God. The nature of this hateful God poses as a savior but instead of being helpful, or being resurrected to save humankind, he poses as a false or fake entity, which confuses and frustrates the speaker. Vallejo depicts God as hateful instead of merciful, because the speaker challenges and questions God’s methods.

Read More
1551 Words | 7 Pages

Pablo Neruda, who was known to be a communist Chilean poet, often reflects on his beliefs and how they affect his persona and his deliberations about humanity. With this, he explores the expansive perception of how the Western world centers its interests on artificiality in his works Height of Machu Picchu and United Fruit Co. By contemplating about the struggles of humankind, the writer observes the way in which society bases its way of living on hollow values instead of natural ideals. Perhaps, the episode in which Neruda goes through, comprising of his exile from Chile for being a communist, is what triggers the creation of such concern-based poems.

Read More
385 Words | 2 Pages

In this interactive oral on the novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I had advanced my understanding of the novel with the new context of the book I learned. The oral had allowed for me to learn about the history of Columbia where the novel is set in as well as the culture tied to the country. Not only that, the background of Marquez and his magic realism roots were taught in the oral which allowed for a deeper understanding of the intensity of the novel’s significant events. Magic realism is fantasy used to enhance the reality of a story, not escape it. Marquez is considered to be one of the masters of magic realism, and from that, I learn about why certain scenes seem almost impossible.

Read More
385 Words | 2 Pages

In A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses imagery, simile, symbolism and metaphor to describe the mistreatment of an ‘angel’ that fell from the sky, revealing the theme that assumptions can lead to unwarranted misfortune for the one being judged. This theme is first presented when characters Pelayo and Elisenda discover a man with wings. “He was dressed like a ragpicker… his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense of grandeur he might have had” (Marquez, 975). Through visual imagery and simile, describing the winged man as a great grandfather and a ragpicker, he is connoted as grotesque, malformed, and of no use. These assumptions piled negative connotations on the old man without

Read More
955 Words | 4 Pages

The first stanza of the poem personifies Africa as a woman of her beauty. The second stanza shows the history of Africa crippled of her powers. The third stanza shows Africa is rising from the suffering of her past. First, the poem personifies Africa as a woman to define the continent’s beauty. The poet uses the earthly method to compare Africa to a woman.

Read More
1323 Words | 6 Pages

Despite being a whore, the description of her house is so grand and attractive that if one were to look over the description, they might discern her house as an elegant paradise. In reality prostitutes are always regarded in a lower class but in this novel Marquez tries to make Cervantes appear to be a pretty and attractive women of a higher class. Through Marquez’s narrative technique he converts a normal brothel into a beautiful paradise using dreamlike elements to portray the theme of magic

Read More

More about The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

Related Topics

Open Document