Thesis: As one challenges the Dominican culture through characters in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, one gains an understanding of the motives and actions of Dominican men and their converse impact on women.…
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, isolation is a common theme that contributes to character development throughout the novel. Junot Diaz, in his narration of Oscar’s life through the eyes of Yunior, induces the idea that isolation is a self-imagined way for a character or person to justify his/her differences from society and the people around them. While there are outside forces that contribute to the feeling of isolation, such as cultural differences, immigration, and gender stereotypes and expectations; in the end, Diaz firmly believes that a person’s feeling of isolation is a crutch to reason why he/she does not fit in.…
The story is non-chronological and is told out of order, mimicking the way that memories are often not remembered sequentially. In addition, the story is told like clockwork, told repetitively through memories that essentially keep Santiago alive twenty-seven years after his death. Although most of the chapters end on an exclamation similar to “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!” the story is reconstructed again, with a new memory or voice telling the story, adding more pieces to solve the puzzle of Santiago Nasar’s murder (García Márquez 71). Santiago’s murder is retold in each chapter, but Santiago becomes ‘resurrected’ in the next where his last moments are replayed, up until the last chapter of the novel. The last sentence of the novel ends with the line “He went into his house through the back door that had been open since six and fell on his face in the kitchen”, again ending Santiago’s life, but this time ending the loop of Santiago’s death and his following resurrection (García Márquez 120). The novel ends with no conclusion, paralleling the fact that Santiago’s murder has no conclusion or resolution. Santiago dies with his innocence still in question, but the circumstances of his death causes Santiago to still be remembered and, therefore, to still be…
1. How does the author want the reader to feel while reading "The Cask of Amontillado"?…
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is about a Dominican family who lives in Paterson New Jersey and they have been through many tribulations in life. The theme I chose for my essay is Fuku and Love, in the novel these two themes were mainly the reason why the characters got their self in situations they could not overcome. The novel is overall about finding love and overcoming the family curse.…
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is both a typical and a typical novel. It has a recognizing coming-of-age story of Oscar’s journey to adulthood but it is also so much more. It has Dominican Republic history and how the “fuku” curse has affected Oscar in more ways than you could imagine. It is a novel within a novel and is much more than ever thought it would be. Junot Diaz creates something that’s both typical and a typical. He creates a twenty first century novel with a twist.…
In auteur theory, a term originated by film critic Andrew Sarris in his essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory"16, there is a desire to outline the personal vision of the director. This is said to be the key instrument to understanding filmmaking. In addition, he writes the question is how does a director express personal vision? The concern is how this theory is used to examine the initial “obsessions” and “thematic preoccupations” of the director versus the original creator or author. This essentially becomes a study or attempt to outline the director's desire and/or personal statement.…
Many people think that boys in our culture today are brought up to define their identities through heroic individualism and competition, particularly through separation from home, friends, and family in an outdoors world of work and doing. While on the other hand, girls are brought up to define their identities through connection, cooperation, self-sacrifice, domesticity, and community in an indoor world of love and caring. This view of different male and female roles can be seen throughout In the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao novel. Examining gender roles is an extremely important way to read the text and to fully understand the characters, their roles and sexual tension throughout the book. The novel takes place both in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, places in which the ideal “man” is oozing masculinity and is tough, suave, and able to stand up for himself while the ideal woman tends to be a bit more dependent and in less control than males. In Oscar’s family, however, this is not true at all and it is important to ask ourselves, what happens when a group of people do not conform to the roles most people want them to fit in to?…
It just happens that the author uses Felicia’s story to not only make a comment that is relevant to the identity of Felicia, but rather a comment that reflects the identities of all the characters and that can be applied to all of our lives. Garcia is using the stories of her characters to make a statement on the idea of identity. Garcia’s depiction of Felicia’s death mimics how one’s identity can be irregular and undefined. Garcia’s inclusion of the death of Felicia allows her to add layers of meaning to the novel. Garcia uses the death of Felicia to symbolize the novel’s theme of uncertainty and irregularity in identity. The author uses Felicia’s story to make a comment on how identities are always going to be distorted or tainted in a way, and that there is no such thing as a perfect identity. All in all, Foster’s ideas in his chapter “It’s Never Just Heart Disease...And Rarely Just Illness” are relevant in the novel Dreaming in Cuban as author Cristina Garcia uses disease and death to paint a revitalized picture of identity in addition to making a strong statement on the idea of uncertainties in…
At the end, the characters accept their motives, ambitions, hopes and fears which determine their actions…
Yunior, specifically, realizes this attitude in Oscar, especially since he is the narrator and unsympathetically writes, “for four days Oscar resisted any attempt to pack him up in a plane, which says a lot about this fat kid’s fortitude,” (Diaz 303). Throughout the course of the novel, Yunior does not speak endearingly of Oscar, showing his lack of affection and immorality to him. The only reason Yunior tolerates Wao’s nerdiness is because of his love for Lola. Instead of letting Oscar live happily, Yunior flies down to the Dominican Republic with Lola to bring Oscar back to the states, telling him that he will get himself killed if he stays. Yunior writes, “Did I fly down? Of course I did. With Lola. Nothing brings a couple together quite like catastrophe” to which Oscar alludes to Shakespeare by saying, “Et tu, Yunior?” illustrating the ironic and hypocritical nature of Oscar’s life (Diaz 319). Wao refuses to leave Santo Domingo for the States because he loves Ybon too passionately to ever leave her again. If Yunior ever took the time to realize “that it was only because of [Ybon’s] love that [Oscar] had been able to do the thing that he had done” which was to still stand by Ybon after his life had been threatened,…
The manner in which the author was able to conduct this structure in the specific way that he did, creates the chronology of events, and by choosing narrative structure specifically. The chronological order of events is smooth and is not disrupted which assists in keeping the reader in contact with all the characters. Through this structure the reader is able to comprehend the reason why the novel ended with Santiago’s death; which is the moral failure of the members of society.…
Cited: Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead, 2007. Print.…
This novel really stirred my emotions, especially in the beginning. For example, Candelario works at a restaurant owned by a man named Don Gustavo. Candelario is the salad maker and what taught, by Don Gustavo himself, how to make a perfect Caesar salad for his customers. The doctor and his wife came in and both ordered salads and Candelario made the salads exactly to Don’s instructions, but the customers were not pleased. Since they were not pleased Don fired Gustavo on the spot that night. This made me very angered with Don and people like Don. It sucks when you do something right but then someone is displeased so all of a sudden it was the wrong thing to do. In this situation, Don was definitely the bad man and people should…
I’ve chosen this book to review on for as the first glance I’m quite struck on its title and curious about the story within and important matters to know about. The Author of the book is one the great and most skillful writers in the Philippines that also excite to discover how really skillful he is. He is a workmanlike, published about 8 great books during the publication of this book.…