In Darkness We Meet
Assignment #1 part 3
In Darkness We Meet
Melissa Nicholls
12 H Diaz states in this interview that, “learning English is such a violent experience as a kid.” He explains that it could be such a violent experience, especially for immigrants, because English seems to be this language that one has to perfect. Someone learning this language will punish them selves for every mistake they make, thinking everyone will be judging them, when in reality they’re their only critic. This “violent experience” is basically all created in ones head. Diaz wanted to find a way to really explain to people the experiences and changes that immigrants go through. To do this and to clearly get his points across, he decided on science fiction. This is because science fiction, fantasy, etc, are known to show extreme changes. So throughout his narratives it seemed to build “history of the immigrant.” Diaz uses the story of Shazam to demonstrate what he believes the relation between the Dominican and America is. There’s shown to be a big gap between the Dominican, which is known as the less fortunate and suffering place, and America, which is known for being the super country. The gap is closed with what Diaz believes his role is, the Shazam. He’s the lightening that shoots between the Dominican and America, to connect them two despite their large differences. Language, being created years and years ago, has stories behind each word. Each country connects to each other by taking fragments of words from these other countries and forming new ones. These fragments create the stories of the relations between these countries. So in the long run even though countries speak different languages, language is what actually connects us all causing language to be the “pantheon of our survival.” Through out “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” Diaz continuously used Spanish words, without definitions provided. I feel as if his goal was to use the Spanish language to get a
In Darkness We Meet
Melissa Nicholls
12 H Diaz states in this interview that, “learning English is such a violent experience as a kid.” He explains that it could be such a violent experience, especially for immigrants, because English seems to be this language that one has to perfect. Someone learning this language will punish them selves for every mistake they make, thinking everyone will be judging them, when in reality they’re their only critic. This “violent experience” is basically all created in ones head. Diaz wanted to find a way to really explain to people the experiences and changes that immigrants go through. To do this and to clearly get his points across, he decided on science fiction. This is because science fiction, fantasy, etc, are known to show extreme changes. So throughout his narratives it seemed to build “history of the immigrant.” Diaz uses the story of Shazam to demonstrate what he believes the relation between the Dominican and America is. There’s shown to be a big gap between the Dominican, which is known as the less fortunate and suffering place, and America, which is known for being the super country. The gap is closed with what Diaz believes his role is, the Shazam. He’s the lightening that shoots between the Dominican and America, to connect them two despite their large differences. Language, being created years and years ago, has stories behind each word. Each country connects to each other by taking fragments of words from these other countries and forming new ones. These fragments create the stories of the relations between these countries. So in the long run even though countries speak different languages, language is what actually connects us all causing language to be the “pantheon of our survival.” Through out “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” Diaz continuously used Spanish words, without definitions provided. I feel as if his goal was to use the Spanish language to get a