Oscar De Leo Analysis

The legacy and impact of the Spanish conquest is continually discussed and analyzed. The struggle in finding native identities while also acknowledging Spanish heritage is a continuing process in Latin America. Modern film and art, such as Salvador Carrasco’s La Otra Conquista and Diego Rivera’s mural the arrival of Cortés speak about the conquest and its effects on Mexico identity. The film challenges myths about the conquest by arguing against the greatness of Cortés, showing power in native agency, and Spanish dependency on interpreters. The mural upholds myths of the conquest like the black legend, minimizes

The reader gets a rare and exotic understanding of a totally foreign and ancient culture experiencing the growing pains of colonial expansion during the British domination

Although the book’s titular character is Oscar de Leon, he shares chapters with his sister, his mother, his college roommate, Yunior (revealed to be the book’s narrator), and his mother’s parents, the Cabrals. By representing a family with different personalities—Oscar is overweight, and nerdy while Lola is powerful and independent, for example—Díaz creates a microcosm for all Dominican immigrants. Each chapter (and character) in the past is melded into the story in the present, and in this way, the momentum and excitement is never lost until the very last

“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

"Fuku" which was curse "fuku americanus, or more colloquially, fuku- generally a curse or a doom of some kind, specifically the curse and the Doom of the new World" (Diaz 1). "Fuku" is a curse that can be laid upon family(s) and can travel from generation to generations. A curse levied upon an individual for doing something bad or terrible to someone. That was the cursed laid on Oscar and his entire family for the rest of their life. The fuku created a bad luck that followed Oscar for most of his entire life, and onto is

““Fuku americanus” Diaz explains, is "generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World." It seems especially contagious and deadly in the Dominican Republic, where "it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the Fukú on the world.”” (Review: It’s a Wonderful Life 4). Fukú is shown through the many horrific events that are shown throughout. Trujillo is believed to be able to put the curse on whoever he chooses for many generations to follow. In the news article Fukú Americanus, Deresiewicz states,

In his work of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz uses both love and violence as major elements in the story of the Cabral de León family. The curse of fukú is one of violence that results in death and heartbreak in the family. While at the same time love also drives much of the events of the story. For example Abelard's love for his family, Belicia’s heartbreaks and love for her children, Oscar’s never ending quest for love and Yunior’s barely functional relationship with Lola. These are all under the guise of fukú.While the themes of love and violence would appear to work against each other, Junot Diaz actually makes them works together to maybe end the curse of fukú on this family.

Being a Dominican male is a substantial part of this novel. Being a Dominican man comes with responsibilities that Oscar struggled with everyday. These expectations consist of being mahco, a role model, and to an outside eye, a womanizer. “[Oscar] had none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn 't have pulled a girl

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.

The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who now plans its future--these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative. (3 All this Water,

Bravery was a huge thing for the natives of the Caribbean islands when the European colonizers arrived. The weak ones were either killed or enslaved by the dominant Europeans. With the help of literature, many native tribal groups got together to fight for freedom. During the childhood of V. S. Naipaul, many conflicts between the natives and the colonizers were erupting for independence. This is heavily reflected through literature coming from the mid 1900’s and demonstrates the hardships the natives faced for their freedom. By using different types of conflicts, authors can distinguish the differences in the mindsets of the native population from the colonizers. The Caribbean authors use different types of person vs. society conflicts to demonstrate the basic differences between the two different

In the first three chapters, Sartorius devotes these chapters specifically to illuminate the reverberation of loyalty and race ideology that spread throughout the Spanish American colonies during and after Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquest of the Spanish throne; the last three chapters reveals how the contours of loyalty and race were redefined after the official end of the Ten Years’ War, February 10, 1878, along with the renewed focus on progressiveness of nation building which ended the Spanish empirical rule of Cuba. Sartorius recounts imaginative ways in which the crown elicited loyalty from people of color, free or enslaved, indigenous or mixed in believing that their loyalty to the thrown would be rewarded with citizenship and equality—Cuba Libre. The two pathways towards gaining privileges, access, and mobility, specifically for indigenous and people of color populations were military service, and public spheres (political expression), in and within Cuba. The avenues of race and loyalty cloaked underneath the mask of the “empire” were frontiers for exploration and discovery of opportunities for a sort of freedom, in no way equal to that of white inhabitants, for a Cuban population often ignored on the basis of color or birth

Burkholder and Johnson’s text is a historical analysis of imperial bureaucracies that analyzes them from the top down. They begin with a discussion on the goals of Spanish and Portuguese colonization, the challenges distance and time posed, and the general administrative organization of the various colonies. They then proceed down the bureaucratic ladder in order of importance, beginning with the Council of the Indies and concluding with the local offices sold by the Spaniards as they were going bankrupt. Finally, Burkholder and Johnson address how Portuguese colonization differed from that of the Spaniards. The chapter is written very much as a history, focusing on dates and facts gathered from primary sources and other scholarly research,

When one walks down the street and ten people cross one’s path, at least one of those people could be suffering from a mental illness that manifests itself as an eating disorder. It almost seems as though it’s too common, as though anyone could suffer from one of these ailments. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists sing the song Me and Mia, and it describes how anyone could suffer from an eating disorder and Ted Leo’s personal story in dealing with this mental illness. Ted Leo’s sings these lyrics in the beginning of the song- “And though, I must have looked half a person to tell the tale in my own version, it was o-o-only then that I felt whole” and is explaining how this is his own story about his association with eating disorders. How he feels he is emotionally incomplete without his eating disorder. Ted Leo uses terms maybe only someone familiar with eating disorders might know,

In part two of lecture the word vestigium in Latin was defined as a footprint. And in lecture Roland Barthes who we learned about in past lectures said that photography is not just any kind of relic its a specific form of relic called the vestigium. Meaning that a physical impression is produced by the physical presence of a person in the form of light rays that reflected off of the body and onto the light-sensitive photographic material. There is also a whole class of footprints of saints or vesitigia from different parts of the world that are included in lecture. There are the footprints of Jesus, the prophet Muhammad, and a footprint of the Buddha kept in a temple in Thailand.