Analysis of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a happy book. The Author, Junot Diaz, does a great job fooling the reader into believing the story is about the De Leon family, specifically Oscar who is an over weight 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. Instead, the story actually portrays the dark history of the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Upon reading the stories of Oscar’s relatives the reader feels a powerful message of fear and oppression due to the actions of the Trujillo regime. Even after the demise of

The narrator states, “She looked at her drawings. I made up this whole new life in there. You should have seen it. The two of us had kids, a big blue house, hobbies, the whole fucking thing. She ran her nails over my side. A week from then she would be asking me again, begging actually, telling me all the good things we’d do and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out of her ear like a worm but right then, in that apartment, we seemed like we were normal folks. Like maybe everything was fine” (Diaz 226). The passage above suggests that Aurora and the narrator show their affection toward each other in an uncanny way. There is much evidence to support that these two are a catastrophe together. While Diaz could have written about a cliche love story, he chose to reveal the more unedited version of relationships that relate with ordinary people. Not everyone has a perfect relationship, as people have different ways of showing their affection toward each other, such as Aurora and Diaz, who define this affection through abusive behaviors. The questions that stem from this are: while they state they love each other, can you call it love when you feel intense hatred for the other person? Is love really physically hurting each other and later making up with

Love is a powerful emotion that every human being has experience at least once in their life. There are numerous connotations that refer to this emotion, but there is only one kind of love that can make a person change completely in unexpected ways. It is the kind of love that consumes the soul and everything within. Mixed with excitement, adventure, heartbreak, happiness and joy; it is a big ball of feelings, all concentrated in one simple, yet extremely complicated necessity to have, protect, please and give all of oneself to that one person. In certain occasions, love can grow very intense and, consequently,

In “The Cheater’s Guide to Love”, Junot Díaz presents a story about love that goes sour after the primary character, Yunior’s infidelity is discovered. But beyond just an emotionally bleak story, Díaz also uses the background of a love story gone bad to explore issues of race through Yunior’s narrative style, second-person point of view, and the characterization of the various women Yunior meets.

“FUKÚ” is an atavistic deadly curse that follows the De León family, and everything that can go wrong for them does. However, I believe that the fukú is only a consequence of their actions and a way for them to rationalize their misfortunes. The characters are using fukú as a crutch in place of taking responsibilities for their own actions. This is because they don’t want to accept the fact that things don’t always go the way they want them to. So they choose to blame the fukú for making their problems happen. So when fukú strikes a mongoose appears it comes as a character of a guardian angel with a sanguine presence. A mongoose is a weasel like animal that appears in the near death experiences of the characters. When it comes it shows a

One thing the Gangster forgot to tell Beli is that he was married and the wife was Trujillo blood. Since Beli was so excited about the pregnancy, she was telling everyone about it and soon the news got to the palace and the Gangster wife was furious.

Oscar is the antithesis of his culture’s idea of manliness. In the beginning we meet an Oscar who is called “Porfirio Rubirosa” (21). Everyone is proud of the boy because this is exactly what he needs to be to be a Dominican man. Men from Dominican Republic, and perhaps Spanish Caribbean men, are expected to take care of their family especially their mothers and sisters, yet they are also expected to be “playboys” who have multiple women. as the first line of the story communicates, “Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly-bachetero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock” (21). Oscar is the type of man who women say they want; kind, sensitive, considerate, smart, and romantic. He truly want to find true

Yunior represents the stereotypical Dominican male raised in the states, yet he battles with self-definition as he comes to terms with who he is on the inside as opposed to who he is purportedly supposed to be on the outside. According to the Dominican culture, males are the picture of masculinity, known for their womanizing ways. The central conflict within Yunior is his love for the Dominican social norm versus his love for the things in his life that represented nerdiness. Yunior lifted weights and ran to keep himself physically fit and was sexually promiscuous, at the same time, he enjoyed and engaged in nerdy banter with Oscar about science fiction genre, anime, fantasy and even writing. Yunior and Oscar share the same interests, which Yunior would never admit to anyone else, which is clear when Yunior says,

Trouble began to brew because of the woman, and it seemed logical to any normal person to discontinue the pursuit; but Oscar’s stubbornness that was frequently depicted in situations throughout the novel led him to his death. In this novel there was no other way for Oscar to die logically; he needed a big bang to bow out of his eccentric life and what better way for him, than to die for love. True love, what Oscar had been searching for his entire life and finally found, had killed him.

In the story, Oscar goes through difficult situations to want to interpret the role of the Dominican man. During the story, Oscar seeks a woman who gives him love and makes him feel like a man, but does not have the masculine qualities necessary to achieve his purpose. While his friend Yunior is the opposite, that is, his role in history is a man that women are always behind him by his charms, to the point that he cannot maintain a relationship with a woman because he cannot be faithful.

In many cultures, especially today 's America many people do not believe in curses or do not take them seriously. However in the Dominican culture, the curse of the Fuku is life or death. If you are cursed with it you and your family will receive bad luck for all your lives. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao is a story about a Dominican family, the Cabrals, who receive this curse and the text follows the horrors they experience. The story is told from multiple points of view  members of the Cabral family and those close to them. In The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz uses Different points of view of characters to explore the thematic concern of the magical element of the Fuku and how it effects each character. It is important for Diaz to use these different points of view to show the power and realism of this curse, especially in the Dominican culture.

Oscar spent his whole life finding love. Ybone often got exposed to misogyny by the captain’s abusive relationship “If you ever touch my mujer again I’m going to kill you.” (Diaz 296) Unlike the typical Dominican men Oscar proved his pure love for Ybone and shows how there can be a light side throughout

Esquivel showed love in a whole other aspect from life in the movie and novel “Like Water for Chocolate”. This movie and novel is about monthly installments with recipes, romances, and home remedies. Love was very powerful and changed everybody’s life, it kept some people around, made some people leave and it even made some people die. Love is something that can take over someone’s mind, soul and body. When two people are in love no one and nothing can get in the way of those two individuals from being together. When you’re in love you’ll do just about anything to keep yourself and the one you love happy. For example in “Like Water for Chocolate” Pedro was so in love with Tita that’s when it came time

Love is a far-reaching and far encompassing term. More often than not when we hear the word love, we tend to define it in romantic terms, but to do so would slight the word. There is more than just romantic love. There is love in friendship, there is paternal love and from that there is familial love. The latter is the basis of Con Amor, a character study, rife with tension, about a woman whose actions are inspired by and brought about with one entity. Love.

Youth is the most beautiful moment in life, colorful and upbeat despite the failures and frustrations. It is a period where one has mixed feelings and is restless, experiencing changes. From those experiences, you not only learn but gain strength, courage, and confidence to fight for what you want. For instance, Oscar learns the difference between sexual love and true intimate love. Youth is about living happy and carefree by not being afraid to chase after your dreams, “because anything you dream, you can be.” If you don’t do what your heart desires, you will be left with regrets. For example, Oscar wanted to find a partner who would return the same amount of love. After having many one-sided relationships, he finally discovers the true love of his life, Ybon. Although the experience of love means inviting the possibility of losing someone or sacrificing your own life, he grows and realizes the beauty of love rather than focusing on the pain. And that is youth. Life is more beautiful knowing that we have taken a loan on death. Light is treasured more when there’s darkness, and happiness is treasured more when there is sadness. In the brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao, we learn that true happiness is not achieving your dreams, but it’s from the process of achieving something most dear to you that brings happiness. When Oscar was taken to the canefield, he told the two men that “because of [Ybon’s] love he’d been able to do the thing that he had done.” His actions made him a