Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscan Wao Analysis

Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated with his family to New Jersey, where a collection of his short stories are based from. Out of that collection is a short story “Fiesta, 1980”, which was featured in The Best American Short Stories, 1997. This story is told from the perspective of an adolescent boy, who lives in the Bronx of northern New Jersey with his family. He is having trouble understanding why things are the way they are in his family. Diaz shows Yunior’s character through his cultures, his interaction with his family, and his bitterness toward his father.

“In the story “Fiesta, 1980,” by Junot Diaz, a Dominican boy named Yunior narrates the occasion when his family that consists of his “Papi”, “Mami”, brother and younger sister; drive to New York from New Jersey to have a welcome party for his aunt and uncle that just came from the Dominican Republic. Yunior uses flashbacks to tell the reader how his father is having an affair with a woman and how Yunior’s father is abusive towards him. Diaz develops the character of “Papi” as abusive and as a macho person in “Fiesta, 1980,” through what he says, does, and what others say about him.

Point of view is important in any novel. It allows readers to see and understand the events and characters in a novel. Depending on who is speaking, point of view can drive the plot and convey the thoughts of the characters in a story. In the novel, The Brief Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, point of view plays a crucial role in narrating the life of the lonesome outsider, Oscar. The novel is narrated in first person, but Diaz chooses to disclose who the speaker is until later in the book. As the story progresses, there are clues that hint to the reader who the outside source narrating Oscars life is. Diaz uses Yunior to narrate a majority of the novel. This point of view lets the readers understand the Dominican culture through Yunior’s commentary and perspective. It also gives an outside perspective on Oscar which helps build Oscar as a character. Instead of using an omniscient third person or generic first person point of view, Diaz uses multiple characters to narrate the story. This ingenious idea gave the story a more personal and up close look at not only the life of Oscar, but also the lives of his sister, Lola, and his mother, Beli.

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 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.

While at Rutgers, Oscar thought he had something going with a girl named Jenni Muñuz. They became pretty good friends, getting into deep conversations and telling each other secrets. Oscar only imagined the relationship developing into Jenni becoming his girlfriend. The Fuku had to be getting the best of Oscar at this point, as Jenni found another guy that she made her boyfriend. Again, Oscar was more than crushed. His heart had cracked into a million pieces, glued back together and the shattered again. Oscar was in such bad shape after Jenni found a boyfriend that he decided to commit suicide. Luckily for Oscar, he survived his jump from the bridge as he landed safely on the median. Oscar makes it through college and finds a nice job teaching at his old high school in New Jersey. It is not until a much needed trip to the Dominican Republic where his attitude starts to change.

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."

““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 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the author presents the reader with recurring mysterious images and characters. In visual art, repetition of colors, shapes and textures is used to create unity, emphasis and rhythm. Because Diaz is painting his story with words he is using the literary device of repetition for the same reasons, for emphasis, to create a rhythm and to tie the account together. The narrative of Oscar and the Cabral and De Leon families and friends moves back and forth in time and the repetition of images with slight variations is a powerful way of maintaining and connecting the story line or theme in what may seem like a jumble of events. The “man with no face” and “paginas en blanco” , ‘blank pages’ or missing words are just a few of the recurring symbols used to connect past, present and further and to emphasize the predictable yet random feelings and consequences of 'Fuku'. By looking more closely at how and why these symbols were used, the major theme represented in the story of Oscar’s wonderful life, becomes apparent.

To practice machismo, also known as masculinity in a Dominican culture, males have to hide their flaws and act a certain way. If men express their un-masculine nature, they will be seen as expressing their weakness. In Drown written by Junot Díaz, contains many stories about Dominican Republic male struggles as an immigrant in America. One of the struggles Díaz expresses in his text is appearing masculine in society’s eyes. From the story “Drown”, the unnamed narrator expresses what it means to be masculine. “Boyfriend” is a story about another unnamed narrator observing his neighbor’s relationship, and comparing it to his own past. Yunior, the narrator of the story “Negocios”, explains the history of his father Papi, also known as Ramón. Society creates many definitions for what it means to be masculine, leading the narrator from “Drown”, the narrator from “Boyfriend”, and Ramón struggling to choose between doing what they want for themselves, or do what society wants to see.

Trouble began to brew because of the woman, and it seemed logical to any normal person to discontinue the pursuit; but Oscar’s stubbornness that was frequently depicted in situations throughout the novel led him to his death. In this novel there was no other way for Oscar to die logically; he needed a big bang to bow out of his eccentric life and what better way for him, than to die for love. True love, what Oscar had been searching for his entire life and finally found, had killed him.

One thing all human beings, have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and family expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.

Throughout his writing, he degrades women and immigrants escaping the tyrannous regime in the Dominican Republic. Fremio Sepulveda, a literary critic, works to analyze Junot Diaz’s novel from an immigrant perspective as he analyzes The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in terms of its racial and gender stereotypes. According to Sepulveda, Diaz incorporates a male narrator who, “degrades women to foreground his own masculine identity ” showing how Diaz’s writing style can challenge many of his readers. For example in the novel, Diaz writes, “[he] was actually partying with Johnny Abbes sucking whiskey out of the navels of underage (expletive)”(Diaz.122). This quote shows how Diaz incorporates inappropriate wording and references to develop his storyline making the book unsuitable for high school students. Although Diaz may be incorporating this style to develop the plot of the story, it would be illogical to implement it in a school curriculum due to its controversial nature. Also, Carlin Romano, writer of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: It's Hard Going, But Stay With It,” criticizes much of Diaz’s book for his “irritating prose,” “badly written passages,” as well as “a hodgepodge of repetitive riffs on teenage sexuality,” which goes to show how much of an impact Diaz can have on high school students reading his book and the teachers teaching the book as well. Although some teenagers may be able to handle the suggestive nature of Diaz’s writing, many teenagers would find the explanation of certain details and descriptions to be uncomfortable and gorey. Those teenagers that are able to read through the book may find themselves unsettled at the end, despite the fact that they are able to get through the harsh discrimination and unsettling topics like racial and gender bigotry. The tendentious topics Diaz chooses to bring up can have a

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.