Summary: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Coincidentally, the narrator of the story, Yunior, is writing a book. The narrator explains in the preface that he is relating a fuku story, “Mine ain’t the scariest, the clearest, the most painful, or the most beautiful” (Diaz 6) writes Yunior. However, it is “one that’s got its fingers around my throat” (6). Fuku is a curse that began with, “The arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola” (1). In the first chapter of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaze, the reader is introduced to the main character, Oscar de Leon. He’s the typical Dominican Republican lady’s man at seven, then adolescents hits and he gains a substantial amount of weight and zits and his fixation on science fiction turns from cute to nerdy, “Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber….Couldn’t have passed for Normal if he’d wanted to” (21). This first chapter portrays an Oscar cloaked in nerdiness, no real friends, and a propensity to fall in love and lust with, “every girl in the vicinity” (23). He falls in love with Ana his senior year of High School. Ana, however, has cast him into the friend’s zone and soon returns to her abusive boyfriend. Rejected and dejected Oscar returns to food and science fiction to soothe his wounded soul.

“ His uncle assumed there was probably an attack on the whole neighborhood, but La Inca gave Oscar a meaningful look that said she knew his activities were the reason their house had been shot at. He still didn't stop to think and consider that he was endangering his family,

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

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is about a Dominican family who lives in Paterson New Jersey and they have been through many tribulations in life. The theme I chose for my essay is Fuku and Love, in the novel these two themes were mainly the reason why the characters got their self in situations they could not overcome. The novel is overall about finding love and overcoming the family curse.

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

As it unfolds in "The Golden Age" section, Oscar is part of a Dominican-American family that lives in Paterson, New Jersey. As a child he is pushed forward to the opposite sex by his mother, which is very proud about his early signs of virility. This is seen as one of the standing characteristics of Dominican males. Further on, we watch the decline of Oscar's success with women as he gains weight and he deepens himself in literature and isolation. This is caused by Maritza's rejection which affected him profoundly.

Oscar continued to teach at his old high school in New Jersey, sad and depressed everyday for three years, that is until his trip to Santo Domingo. Oscar forgot how much he had missed spending time in the Dominican. His mind was no longer filled to the brim with disappointment, stress and the feeling of being depressed. For the first time in a while, he saw beautiful

Being abused as a child and nobody wanting her because of her skin color and loosing her parents and siblings in murder, and yet she didn’t do anything to deserve this. As teen years met Belicia she gained the privilege to make decisions for her self. Until then she suffers the fukú from her own actions. Moving through the generation fukú strikes Belicia’s son Oscar after he made the decision to break one girl’s heart because he was dating two girls contemporaneously. In return he got his heart broken by the girl he chose to stay with and then everything went downhill for Oscar. Gaining weight, and casting every one away Oscar lost his popularity and became a pathetic nobody with suicidal thoughts. "Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkein and, most of all, of finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the....curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States and back again."

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 conclusion of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is satisfying because the ending revolved around Oscar’s death, the separate stories of the novel now intertwined because of him. His transformation and new personality was ultimately the cause of his death, but in a sense it can be considered happy because it seems just right. Oscar becomes a new person and breaks free of his nerdy and rejected persona. Diaz seamlessly weaves the ending of Oscar Wao’s story and all the characters around him due to their natures and the preceding actions. The ending of this novel is convincing and logical because of Oscar’s new transformation which led him to do things which he would have not done before. These things that he did, most specifically pursuing a woman he should not have, led him to his death. Despite the morbid ending, it is not unreasonable; it is certainly logical and therefore satisfying to the

In popular culture and mainstream media, women are often portrayed as overtly sexual objects that are obligated to entertain the idea of patriarchy. The strong outward appearances and characteristics of women in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz are deceiving, as they do not reveal their powerlessness against men. Throughout the entire book, women are described and seen as sexual objects through the eyes of Yunior, Oscar, and various other men. In the first chapter, Oscar and his peers treat women like they are disposable, despite their desire and need for them. This negative trend is reinforced in the next two chapters, as the narrators shamelessly describe women by emphasizing their feminine traits whilst simultaneously displaying the idea of male dominance. In addition, strong-willed women like Beli and Lola refuse to succumb to such lustful treatment, but when they are tempted with the fantasy of true love, they immediately lose their strength and surrender. In the last few chapters, these ideas are further reinforced through the sexual desire that Oscar possesses. He meets Ybon, a prostitute with a boyfriend, and immediately falls in love. Ybon is committed to her boyfriend, but because of the way she is seen in a patriarchal system, she gives in to the forbidden love that Oscar offers. No matter how strong these women were within the story, they always let the men have their way. In the end, Oscar dies because of his uncontrollable desire for love. The

Oscar is not the typical Dominican man that his family expects him to be. He is considered to be a nerd which leads to the lack of romance in his adolescence and adulthood. In an article by Joori Joyce Lee it says: “Growing up as a ghetto nerd, or "a smart kid in a poor-ass community," Diaz felt like a mutant because he found himself to be an outsider in both the Dominican subculture and mainstream white American society.” (Lee, pg 23). Oscar could never really fit in with his peers or even with Dominicans, he is always considered an outsider to them. “Everybody noticed his lack of game and because they were Dominican everybody talked about it.” (Diaz, pg. 24). His own family recognizes his lack of masculinity that a Dominican man should have. Even Oscar’s sister Lola encourages him to lose weight and to become more masculine in order to get a girlfriend. His uncle Rudolfo is a prime example of what society expects every

Being overweight, a nerd and romantic are the three reasons why Oscar’s life is miserable. Overweightness caused him to be ugly and as a result not having any relationship with any girl. Nerdliness caused him to be lonely, and in the end having no friends. And even though he was romantic, being a nerd, and overweight, kept the romantic that he was under the shadows. Being disastrously overweight caused Oscar not having any love life.

(pg 169) Oscar ran away from the help that Yunior wanted to give him in order to make him feel better and fall out of depression. Nothing ended up working out except when he had girls to talk to. When it didn’t work out he went

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.