Summary Of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

The scene described on pages 143-152 of Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a horrific one, yet it is essential to the novel due to its power and its effective use of language. In the pages listed, there is are descriptions of La Inca praying for Belicia and the two Elvises beating Belicia to near death. La Inca is able to gather many people together to unite in prayer in hopes of saving Belicia. Even those who were not supportive of her decisions and those who considered her to be a whore.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the reader follows the story of Oscar de Leon as told by his college roommate, Yunior. Although the novel is named after Oscar and depicts his life, the information given tells more about Yunior than Oscar. In many ways, however, Oscar serves as a foil to Yunior, showing the hardships of achieving masculinity in Dominican culture. While, to the public, Yunior is the typical masculine, sexually-driven posterchild of Dominican culture, so much of him is shaped by his relationship with Oscar. In some aspects, Oscar was able to mirror Yunior’s struggles, especially when it came to girls and masculinity, but he is also able to illuminate how hard Yunior struggled to fit in by being more true

The book being discussed in this essay is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. The timeline in this novel was difficult to keep up with due to very frequent time jumps and different character’s perspectives. The entire story was underlined by a curse called “fuku.” Fuku was a curse believed to be brought over by Christopher Columbus and had ties to a Dominican Republic dictator named Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, who was frequently mentioned during the story.

2. This passage from Junot Diaz’s Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao is significant because it initiates the growing tension between Oscar and his love for comic books. Oscar is fascinated by the idea of superheroes which developed his interest to write comic books. Oscar only had a wish to have a girlfriend, but the fact that Oscar’s love for comic books and sci-fi animes was not allowing him to have a girlfriend. These comic books and animes in a way distract him from seeing that what is happening in the world which makes him ill-informed about the world.

When Oscar was younger, he was what the narrator considered to be a “normal Dominican boy” because he was good with charming women. This part of the novel implies that is it expected of Dominican men to be able pursue women with ease and to also have a number of them. “..“in those days he was a ‘normal’ Dominican boy raised in a ‘typical’ Dominican family, his nascent pimp-liness was encouraged by blood and friends alike” (Diaz 11). As a kid, Oscar did indeed fit this stereotype, being he had two girlfriends at once, but as he grows older he becomes the complete opposite. His development into a nerdy, chubby teen ruins his chance at being a “normal” Dominican man, but the masculine culture still somewhat resides within him.

In the the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, written by Junot Diaz, the author portrays the character of Beli as a bitter and aggressive mother who is most often times seen in the book acting in a cruel and violent manner towards her daughter Lola. However, her relentless attitude towards Lola is as a result of all of her victimized history growing up in the Dominican Republic. Beli’s is a one of the most complex characters within Diaz’s book, therefore her story throughout some parts of the book is narrated in third person rather than the typical first or second person narration. Diaz sets the book up in this style as a way for the audience to grasp a better understanding of Beli as a character. Although Beli is portrayed as a hostile mother towards her daughter Lola, it is a as a result of her traumatic past and through those experiences show that she possess a caring side to her.

The author's attitude towards the boys in this novel is ignorant and emotional. This novel is composed of vignettes that show Esperanza learn about the true power of language and the struggle for self- definition. While befriending Sally, she learns more about boys and matures sexually. During the year, Esperanza develops her first crush and even endures sexual assault. From this, her first impression and ignorance over the topic of boys and having the thought process that girls and boys live in different worlds, awakens Esperanza and teaches her an important lesson and becomes to an eyeopening experience.

From the very first pages of the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz, the readers are deliberately shown an overview of fuku, a bad curse. It has caused many tragic consequences to Cabrals family; especially to Oscar. He is the main character of the story who is an overweight 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. In addition, the story actually portrait the darkness time of Cabral's family under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo’s regime. As Diaz mentions that “anyone who plotted against Trujillo would incur a fuku most powerful, down to the seventh generation and beyond”(3), Oscar’s family always unfortunately face tremendous situations

In Junot Diaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar is a Dominican boy who grows up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar begins his youth as a social butterfly, having not one, but two girlfriends at the same time. He breaks up with one of them to be with the prettier one and ends up on the receiving end of a breakup only about a week later. Oscar eventually grows up to love comic books, science fiction, and nerd culture. These geeky inclinations as well as Oscar’s social awkwardness that develops over time cause him to seem lame even to the two other nerdiest kids in his school.

The Curse of Oscar Daniel Plummer Charlestown High School  Have you ever felt cursed in your life-like anything you do or say causes bad luck? Well, this is Oscar de León. He is the protagonist in the novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. Oscar de León is a Dominican-American man who grew up in Paterson New Jersey and is the son of Beli, the brother of Lola, and the most cursed one out of all his family members.

The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.

In “Wildwood”, Junot Diaz presents a troubled teenager by the name Lola to have distinct conflicting values with her mother. Her mother has controversial Dominican norms and responsibilities. These norms are not what Lola wants to be. Her mother soon gets sick and increases Lola’s feelings to take action on how she wants to live her life. When Lola and her mom continue to carry their abusive conflict, Lola decides to run away to Wildwood.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an extraordinary tale that takes you into the lives of Oscar Wao and his family members who are burdened with a terrible curse called fuku. The fuku spell began with Oscar’s grandfather, Abelard. Abelard angered the Dominican Republic dictator, Trujillo, after he allegedly made a joke about the dictator that turned into a crime. However, the real reason behind Abelard’s downfall was his refusal to introduce his daughter to Trujillo, who had a sexual appetite for young women.

Julia Alvarez: The Voice of the Mirabal Sisters Numerous accounts of families affected by oppressive dictatorships exist all around the world. Julia Alvarez, an author whose father was involved in a resistance group to such a regime, is a prime example of one of those stories. After leaving her childhood home of the Dominican Republic, Alvarez struggled to adapt her lifestyle to match that of an average American. During this time period, Alvarez recalled her experience under an authoritarian government and combined it with her impressive storytelling skills to create a fictional documentation of another family just like her’s.

When examined more closely, this assumption completely overlooks Díaz’s emphasis on different perspectives when it comes to coming of age. Although Yunior is younger than Beto, he challenges expectations, and instead of moving on with his life, he sticks to what he knows. Rather than conforming to the typical understanding, Yunior challenges this role by proving he has already grown up just in a different period than Beto.