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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Violence in Fiction The use of violence in fiction is beneficial, as well as purposeful in building and sustaining the author’s main point of the novel. In the article “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” Thomas C. Foster states “[Violence and tragedy are] accidents only on the inside of the novel - on the outside they’re planned, plotted, and executed by somebody, with malice aforethought.” Accidents and tragedy in novels are purposely planned to keep the story moving along, but also to push the character(s) to reach a realization of the bigger picture, and the author’s intended purpose. In The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz includes much violence in his story, whether verbal, or like on page 146, physical.
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.
Junot Diaz, through the narrator Yunior, illustrates how the widespread, and the slave born curse, the fukú, actually represents the symbol of
Throughout Dìaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, readers visualize Oscar’s self-reflection through his physical characteristics. As a young boy, he had confidence and was “a “normal” Dominican boy raised in a “typical” Dominican family, his nascent pimp-liness was encouraged by blood and friends alike” (Díaz 11). However, as he got older, he did not keep his “normal” Dominican appearance of dark skin and “semi-kink hair in a Puerto Rican afro” (Díaz 20). In fact, he began to develop much like the majority of American children today; Oscar began obese.
Junot Diaz develops the characters in The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in a unique way as he uses alludes to other books, comics, and movies in order to give the reader a sense of what kind of character is being incorporated into the book. In the passage above, Diaz establishes and develops a minor character for the sake of the situation at hand. Also, Diaz describes each character through the third person point view which follows Oscar Wao’s (main character) life closely. Through the use of third person point of view, the reader can get an idea of what other characters think about each other and predominantly, what the main character thinks.
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 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
In the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the Dominican culture is told through a stereotypical Dominican named Yunior. As stated in the title, the novel discusses Oscar Wao’s brief life through his family’s curse called Fukú. The history of his family is presented through their downfalls in love, which overtime accumulates into a burden for Oscar to experience the same events his family members had once experienced. This Fukú that has been lurking within the Cabral family’s history from the Dominican Republic to the United States is commonly found through dysfunctional relationships between men and women. The known concept in relationships called love transforms into a corrupted power source for abuse based on the
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an extraordinary tale that takes you into the lives of Oscar Wao and his family members who are burdened with a terrible curse called fuku. The fuku spell began with Oscar’s grandfather, Abelard. Abelard angered the Dominican Republic dictator, Trujillo, after he allegedly made a joke about the dictator that turned into a crime. However, the real reason behind Abelard’s downfall was his refusal to introduce his daughter to Trujillo, who had a sexual appetite for young women.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao writer by Junot Diaz. This book was published in 2007, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and recognized for one of the best books of 2007. The story is about Oscar Wao personal life, including his sister Lola, mother Hypatia Belicia Cabral, Yunior de Las Casas and Abelard.