Junot Díaz, unlike most authors, has an ability to tell his stories without the use of large, descriptive passages. With only a few words he can immerse his readers into the environment of his stories, such as the subject work, Drown. Whether in a comfortable suburb or a decrepit neighborhood, Junot Diaz is skilled in producing active scenes with minimal words in his piece Drown. As Barbara Stewart writes about Junot’s work in Outsider with a Voice, “The New Jersey of which [Junot] writes is the one he knows: a place of blue-collar towns and Latino immigrants, of tostones (mashed fried plantains) and malls and roads where ‘beer bottles grow out of the weeds like squashes’” (New York Times, 8 Dec. 1996). I agree with Stewart’s assertion that, “[Junot] writes about the [place] he knows” because of his rich environmental descriptions, and the way he uses this information to provide context within Drown. Díaz uses his language to immerse the reader into his works. One chapter within Drown that illustrates this well is “Aurora”, a chapter centered on the life of drug dealer Lucero and his romantic endeavors with a questionable woman named Aurora. Díaz uses his careful word choice to illustrate the story setting, to provide context clues, and to provide a deeper meaning to the text in “Aurora”. An example of when Díaz uses his style of language to illustrate setting is when he describes Aurora’s messy living arrangements with druggies; Diaz placed great emphasis on common
It is not just the language of the Dominican culture that we find characters struggling to hold onto in Díaz’s Drown. We also find that the characters walk a fine line of defining themselves as newly Dominican American, and it seems they feel pressured to leave behind their old ways and traditions to join their new society. In the short story “Fiesta, 1980,” we find many examples of the family being torn between their Dominican customs and assimilating to their new American life. This story begins with the explanation of Papi’s most prized possession: a brand-new, lime-green, Volkswagen van. Much to Yunior’s chagrin (due to the fact that he gets sick every time he rides in the vehicle), this van means a lot to Papi, because to him, it represents an American family. According to John Riofrio (2008), “it[the van] is the embracing of the American way which has reenabled Papi’s masculinity,” (p. 33). After arriving at their Tia and Tio’s home for the party, Yunior sneers at his relatives’ apartment stating, “the place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky” (p. 32). It seems as though Yunior, after only a short period in America, is already feeling embarrassed by his culture’s traditions. This chapter of the book also discusses the betrayal of Yunior’s father to his family, by having an affair with a Puerto Rican woman, whom
Each short chapter story written by Junot Diaz presents different key ideas and themes that can easily be identified when reading and analyzing important details contained in his short personal fiction. To begin with, language is one of the important key themes that Junot Diaz focuses on his story. Throughout the chapters, one is able to see a combination of words that contain a mixture of slang in both English and Spanish. Likewise, in his short stories, Diaz includes a variety of Spanish words that are used in his home country as well as other Latin American countries.
Through the use of pathos, schemes, and tropes, Rodriquez offers his conflicting feelings about California and Mexico. By contrasting Mexico and California with these styles of writing, he sets up
Dostoevsky makes a strong case against Jesus in "The Grand Inquisitor": Jesus did not love humanity sufficiently to care for the greater good of the race.
A good example of the setting having an effect is when Diego leaves his home very, very early in the morning. (Sanchez 186). Diego is heading as he says, one of his favorite places in
Nowadays, there are many debates and many discussions about the effect of society; our surrounding and how it keeps controlling us or how come we keep letting it change us or letting it make our decisions for us. What many do not understand is that it all happens because they, or better yet, we are society itself. We as a unit give society so much authority that when it comes down to it, we unintentionally allow it to make the decisions for us. This issue becomes very apparent in the movie Moonlight and the collection of short stories “Drown” by Junot Diaz. In “Drown”, through the voice the narrator of the stories Yunior, the author Junot Diaz greets the readers with a seemingly very distressed group of characters by vividly describing
To be defined as autoethnographic, the speaker also includes and embraces the stereotypes that are typical for his or her culture. “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is an autoethnographic text. From the beginning of the novel many Spanish words are incorporated into the text. “Que muchacha tan fea, she said in disgust, splashing the rest of coffee in the sink. Fea’s become my new name” (Diaz 55). As it can be seen from the passage, Diaz provides no background or explanation of the Spanish words he uses, only context clues. He does this to submerge the reader in the story. Using only the background of the sentence, the reader must think and assume what the words mean. In an autoethnographic sense, Diaz is explaining the Dominican Culture from his perspective. When using this method in novels the author teaches about culture from the way the culture works. Hence why he uses Spanish words with no explanation because a Dominican would not stop the middle of his or her sentence to explain the word he or she just used. This is an excellent method of really getting the reader involved and understanding.
Under the enormous movement of Realism lies a branch known as Suburban Realism, and-- although Suburban Realism is not as highly recognized -- stories that contain such a form usually take on characters that are depressed and bleak. Not many authors are able to be used as prime examples for Suburban Realism, but two of the more famous that can be nominated are John Cheever and John Updike with their captivating stories “The Swimmer” and “Separating,” respectively. “The Swimmer” is a short story where a man named Neddy Merrill, who lives in an affluent neighborhood and has a more prestigious social standing, is going to swim home through every one of his neighbor’s pools, but does not realize as he is doing so that life is fleeting away right before his very eyes. As he makes his way from pool to pool, he starts to lose his strength and has
Chris Abani’s latest novel, The Virgin of The Flames, appears to explore a plethora of quintessentially American themes such as race, religion, sexuality, gender, urban environment, and self discovery. Like many of the previous works of American literature read in this course that act as a window into American life at the time of their publication, The Virgin of The Flames is a bay window to the state of the American psyche as a product of the nation’s history, leading up to Black, a muralist in East Los Angeles. While the novel reads a little strange and can try to grab at too many big ideas at once, the two pillars of conflict in Black’s character effortlessly parallel core conflicts of American life.
Aerban states that Diaz work illustrates, “every red-blooded American male that reaches a zenith in his life. This knowledge comes in both lewd and often brutally honest sentiments that can induce feelings of excitement and unabashed shame, but regardless of the emotions evoked, it is a necessary rite of passage signifying a young man’s entrance into the world of his peers.
Throughout Primo Levi’s, The Drowned And The Saved, Levi reflects on his experiences during the Holocaust in an attempt to convey the tragedies suffered. In doing this, he touches upon his findings of what makes human’s human. He then shows how the Lagers were intended to systematically strip these traits from their prisoners. Overall, he notes two main characteristics of humans: a need for distinction and from this stems the desire for power. First, on the idea of a need for distinction, Levi immediately notes a need throughout all history for separation of good and bad, a “we” and “they” mentality (Levi pg 36).
We Live in Water is a book of short stories written by the postmodern American novelist, Jess Walter. Postmodernist fiction is a form of literature that began after World War II, which offered new and interesting ways to look at society and the arts (Hogue). There are a number of stylistic techniques that are often used in postmodern literature, such as parody, pastiche, fragmentation, and playfulness (Fleming). Though pastiche is the most prominent in We live in Water. Pastiche is generally the respectful imitation of a literary work or the style and content of a work, such as themes, concepts, and characters (“Pastiche”). “Pastiche came to prominence when artists realized that the contemporary moment presents little room for originality because everything has been said and done before–leading postmodern artists to ‘pluck existing styles higgledy-piggledy from the reservoir of literary history’” (Matos).Walter’s imitation of other authors and styles in We Live in Water is one of the many aspects that makes this collection of stories an example of postmodern literature. Jess Walter uses pastiche in the stories “Virgo,” “Don’t Eat Cat,” “Thief,” and “The Last Frontier.” Since, pastiche is merely imitating certain parts of other styles, etc, it is not necessary for the author to use every detail in the same way as the original. Therefore, it is important to point out that Walter does indeed break many of the rules of what one would expect these types of stories (i.e.
The author uses amplification and ekphrastic literary device to describe the surroundings of the protagonist. The author tends to show the protagonist point of view with lots of explaining and metonymies to make the text seem more interesting. Sometimes the additional information the author inputs to help with imagery can get tedious. In all the author creates descriptive text that shows vivid images.
Mario Garcia’s “Rationalizing Malibu” illustrates the life of a troubled man who spirals out of control after experiencing a series of hardships. His problems begin with his bleak childhood that is riddled with physical violence at the hands of his abusive father. The reader is made to believe that these problems are happening to Blaine, an alter ego the narrator has subconsciously created, when the
The settings reflect the character as a mirror. When the young man is among other people on the populated streets he is in control and appears as a very ordinary young man who is in love. But when he moves further on and the surroundings become darker, he becomes different and