Essay about Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

In the book Alvarez informs us that this takes place during Trujillo 's reign over the Dominican Republic in the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Throughout history dictators have risen and fallen all across the world. Many have been seen as evil, and sometimes good to others, but no matter what a persons view tend to be there are some who even consider them god. Due to a dictators extensive powers and complete control over every aspect of a persons life this is what comes to be. Trujillo is just the same, at first his true motives were questioned and it wasn’t apparent to all what he really was. As the Mirabel sisters grow up it becomes clear that Trujillo is in control of more of their lives than it may seemed. Trujillo leads a complete authoritarian rule over the Dominican Republic with spies everywhere, this can suggest that he trying to assume the role of a terrible god, who is always watching and ready to punish. While all

Oscar de Leon from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a character that be classified as a member of many different types of social groups. He is characterized as a Dominican, a

In the "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" Dominican masculinity in the Dominican Republic plays a major role throughout this novel, men are portrayed as a player, sleeping with plenty women, or as having power and are charming, physically attractive and violent at the same. But for Oscar, he was the complete opposite to that Dominican norms. As he struggle all through the novel in search of love. Dominican masculinity and the use of violence in some Dominican men, Oscar life struggle and the generational curse call "fuku" are some of the most important issue I came across throughout this novel. As he was known as the nerd guy, who never get a love back from ladies he was falling in love with.

All of the problems Oscar faces was because of the curse “Fukú” that his parents brought with them to America. The word fukú means “Fukú American or more colloquially, fuku generally a curse or a doom” (www.shmoop.com). The curse is a supernatural ideas that Oscar’s family brought with them to America. It affects Oscar’s life a lot and his love relation with girls always end up dreadful. All the girls, he dated used him for fun when they felt lonely. He struggles to lose his virginity, can’t lose weight and constantly fighting with Beli and Lola. “It's perfectly fine if you don't believe in these "superstitions." In fact, it's better than fine—it's perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fukú believes in you” (www.shmoop.com). People in

This leads the family to believe they are cursed by Trujillo for revenge as more bad luck meets Beli and her children. The belief held by Oscar and his family that Trujillo has cursed his family for vengeance on Abelard was crafted to emphasize how tyrannical Trujillo truly was. This novel was written in the mid 2000’s which would be quite some time after this happened, so readers may not be familiar with this historical aspect. Diaz created the curse in emphasis of the power that Trujillo held over the Dominican Republic’s people while educating readers on this part in history. Furthermore, the curse is symbolic to the theme of power which is illustrated throughout the book. The curse has plagued Oscar’s family for three generations which illustrates in a fictious manner the downsides of power: overbearing control. This symbolizes overbearing control because Oscar’s family has continual bad luck. Overall, the curse set upon Oscar’s family is symbolic to the severity of Trujillo’s reign while also being a symbol for one of the themes in the novel:

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz the author uses the trick of different stories to sew together a series of experiences to create the full story of Oscar’s life. There are many important pieces in the book that help create an understanding of how Oscar came to be Oscar. One example is the experiences of his family members while they lived in Santo Domingo, such as La Inca deciding to go find Beli and also when Beli fell in love with the Gangster. The influence of the sci fi world has also had a massive effect on Oscar, since he had no real examples of a healthy relationship he was under the impression that all relationships had to be like the one’s he saw in movies. Overall the influence of his mother’s past and the influence

Throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, past events greatly affect Oscar’s present activities, attitudes, and values. Oscar Wao must continually contend with the thought of his breakup with Maritza Chacón as a seven year old, and this specific event contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Oscar’s breakup marks a transition in his life from being a stereotypical Dominican “player” to an overweight nerd. During his high school years and beyond, he continually searches for love. However, the search for love and urge to replicate his earlier romantic years ultimately result in his death because love acts as a curse throughout the novel. Oscar’s relationship to his childhood years heavily influence his activities and thoughts

Masculinity is defined as having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man, or have qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness (Dictionary). Masculinity can also be defined as simply just “a male person” (Merriam-Webster). From these definitions, it seems that anyone in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao who is a male, is considered masculine. Yet, masculinity is depicted completely different throughout the book. This novel introduces us to two very different Dominican male characters who are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the word masculinity. The Dominican male portrayed in this novel is driven by sex, power, and charm. The Dominican male also portrays masculinity, almost as if the two are interchangeable in this book. On one hand,

Nothing, culturally relevant, ever came easy to Oscar Wao. Oscar came from a Dominican family where looks, girls and sex came before anything else. When he didn 't fit into the mold of, what he thought was, the typical Dominican, he decided that a curse plagued him. His biggest concern, going into college and driven by hormones, was girls – or the lack thereof. When his two best friends got girlfriends senior year and refused to help set him up with one of their friends, he realized that, “his fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing-friends were embarrassed by him,” and that realization opened his eyes to what was important to him in his life (Díaz 29). He realized that he loved writing and if he wanted to succeed in it, he had to commit everything to it. Throughout his life, at least the sliver that we see, the only things that he succeeded at where the things that he committed everything to, mainly his writing. It gave him a reason to live and that feeling of fulfilment drove him to commit even more to it. For the majority of his life, nothing besides writing gave him that fulfillment until he met Yebon, a beautiful Dominican girl who Oscar subsequently fell in love with. Earlier in the story when Oscar lost meaning, after having his heart broken by La Jablesse, he tried to kill himself. After he survived, he started writing again and became re-committed to it, it gave him the strength to recover and move on. When he met Yebon, he pursued

In the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, tells the story of a young Dominican boy going through his life and his struggles he occurred due to the curse that was on his family, the fuku. The fuku is a curse that is almost the same as karma, it is commonly believed in the Dominican culture that if you did something bad, something bad would happen to you. Junot Diaz uses magical realism throughout the novel in the use of science fiction and fantasy. Magical realism is a literary genre that combines mythical elements with realistic fiction. The author uses magical realism when talking about immigrants, heroes, and outsiders throughout the novel, while talking about how the main character, Oscar, embodies all three of

The main theme that both creates and unites violence and love in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is shown from the very beginning in the Act 1 Preface which sets up the context of the fukú and Trujillo’s repressive regime. The language used sets up the dark never ending curse of the fukú with Diaz saying “Because no matter

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao revolves its narrative around the sexual violence of women during Trujillo’s reign in the Dominican Republic. Despite name of the novel, Oscar is not the only central figure, as the novel also dive into the stories of each member of the de León family. Oscar’s mother, Beli, is a direct victim to the sexual political violence which, as Richardson states, is a “defining narrative of the female characters’ lives” throughout the text (Richardson, 2016, 26). Beli is a character who is defined via her dark skin and feminine body, both of which label her as an outsider within the Dominican Republic. She was victimised throughout her schooling years for her dark skin, however this changed as she reached puberty

(Junot, Diaz. ”Oscar in love”. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Riverhead Books. 2007, pp.

Journal Entry-The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao A question that the book The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao raised for me was how the characters in the book tried to control their identity against the power of the fuku? The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is about a boy named Oscar de Leon, he's from a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Oscar is the hero in the book as he is in search for his love. The Country of Dominican Republic is under a dictatorship by Rafael Trujillo.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a novel composed by Junot Diaz, Oscar Wao tells in what presents to be an oral conversation, consisting in part youth with popular cultural references to fantasy and sci-fi, or American hip-hop, and of Spanish slang extracted from the language of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and South American. Diaz uses transnational as a critique contributing to the inspection of the achievements and the limitations of multiculturalism and its academic phenomenon, ethnic studies. He included numerous allusions to a vast British and American customs of fantasy and comic books, making The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a creative work of the category that indicates the diversity of cultural influences that