The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, readers are able to find the answer to this question. The novel tells a story of a young boy, Oscar, who is growing up in a world that continuously moves between his homeland of the Dominican Republic and the area to which his family…

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne a unifying theme between these two works emerges and the exploration of the ways that these authors impose this specific concept in their respective works leads to a larger understanding of these two novels. Specifically, the unifying theme of the individual within society permeates these two works and creates parallels between them. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao this theme targets Oscar de…

their gender, and the fashions and mannerisms of each gender have begun to merge together. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz explores the idea of how gender roles affect an individual's life in a traditional society. Oscar Wao is not the typical Dominican male. The book states that he “Had none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn't have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. Couldn't play sports for shit, or dominoes, was beyond uncoordinated, threw a…

His is…a cosmic force…Those who try to compare him to his ordinary contemporaries are mistaken. He belongs to…the category of those born to a special destiny“(5,204).The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a dictatorial novel that demonstrates the effects of the famous dictator, Trujillo. Readers enter into the frightening life of a Dominican family through the darkest areas of a country under dictatorial control of Trujillo. Our narrator even blames John F. Kennedy's assassination on Trujillo.…

to which violence, both open and covert, is a constant factor in the life of the region may cause surprise. The incongruous and rather unreal quality of many events, whether fanciful or farcical in appearance, may also prove unexpected. Understanding the Dominican Republic’s cultural atmosphere without discussing the lasting effects of the notoriously violent Trujillato is impossible. In The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, our main characters continue to be influenced by the tumultuous…

Life is an imperfect circle. There is a starting point and an end point in every area of one’s life. This perpetual truth is not simple enough to be deduced down to good or bad. Every imperfect circle is a cycle, and every cycle is different; whether it be at a personal, relationship, or historical level. Inevitably, every cycle continues until broken by the one(s) it directly affects. Although outside forces might attempt to interrupt those cycles, the only one who possesses the power to to…

Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao begins with the narrator's description of the curse, called “fukú, a curse of doom.” It was brought over to the islands of Antilles when the Europeans came, and has stayed ever since. The narrator informs us and claims that the late dictator, Trujillo, has a close connection with fukú. The narrator also informs the reader that he will be telling us the story of Oscar de Léon, who was the victim of his family’s fukú. Oscar, the character around…

that something bad might happen is what blinds us from seeing the good things that happens? Our human need to fill in the gaps for the things that we cannot explain is what persuades us to resort to superstition. It’s human nature. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao deals with Dominican superstitious curse ‘fuku’ and its positive side: zafa. The novel tends to project…

The Watcher In most third-person novels, the audience doesn’t know exactly who the narrator is – the author is the assumed narrator. In the case of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the narration is told through first person, although the reader initially is not sure who this narrator is within the context of the novel itself. Through this narration, the reader gains a certain closeness to the subject matter, while feeling somehow distanced. It’s clear from the narration that this person is…

In the Dominican Republic, there lives a curse so hauntingly horrifying that its believers spend their entire lives watching every step they take in hopes of avoiding falling into its nefarious grasp. The novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, details the tale of the de León family’s merciless fukú; their fragmented story leaves little to no room to doubt that the dangerous, Dominican curse- one that dates back to the discovery of the New World -does indeed exist. But the question is: what…