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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The author tells the story of Oscar’s life through the observations of other characters. Because Oscar does not speak for himself or describe events from his own point of view, we, as readers,...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is often considered a work of historical fiction. Historical fiction is defined as a work where the story itself is fiction, but set in the real past, often...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The male characters in the novel struggle to achieve a positive, healthy masculine identity in part because they lack role models. The two protagonists, Yunior and Oscar, present two contrasting...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao can be interpreted as a straightforward novel with a plot and character development, or it can be seen through the lens of different fictional genres, primarily...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Within the large umbrella category of identity, Junot Diaz addresses elements of race, nationality, place of residence, gender, age and generation, and disability, among others. The author shows...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
When Oscar is a young boy, he has friends who are girls. The other boys find this suspicious and tease him about being gay. Oscar gradually withdraws into himself and gains a lot of weight; by the...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The answer is found in the quote preceding the book: "either I'm nobody or I'm a nation." Obviously, the answer is "a nation," and we have multiple narrators--a nation, if you will--to reflect...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Abelard Cabral (Oscar's grandfather) was an upper-class surgeon and businessman. He married Socorro, a respected nurse practitioner, had a mistress named Lydia, and brought up his two daughters...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I'm not sure that Oscar achieves the American dream himself, but I do think that Oscar helps Yunior and Lola to achieve it. The American dream is, at its...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The importance of fuku in this text, or the bad luck that Yunior writes about in the opening of the text, is shown through the way that it is explained as some impersonal force that is much bigger...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Rember that the fuku is presentes as a kind of curse, and has been with Oscar's family since his grandfather's time in the Dominican republic. So a good way to find places where the fuku is shown...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tells the story of Oscar De León, who, like Diaz, is a Dominican growing up in New Jersey. One theme explored...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz filters his themes of family, love, alienation, and violence through multiple narrators (mainly Yunior). In an interview, Diaz said: I felt...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
La Inca is the cousin of Beli's father, Abelard. So technically speaking, they would be considered second cousins. But of course, their true relationship is much more like mother and daughter. On...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the Watcher (the older Yunior) first mentions the fuku in the footnotes. This curse is linked to the rotten luck of Oscar's family, Trujillo, and even the...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is full of dualities, of character, place, time, theme, and motif. For every literary element in one chapter, there is a contrasting element in another. Diaz...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Gangster is married to Trujillo's sister. She is an older woman, and certainly not the young bombshell that Beli is. Apparently the Gangster and Mrs. Gangster met while both were working in the...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, there are multiple references to science fiction, fantasy, and comics, and they seem, at times, to consume Oscar's thoughts. There are a few reasons that...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
With feelings for Lola at Rutgers, a weight lifter and playboy friend of hers decides to be Oscar’s roommate, and Oscar calls him “Yunior.” Oscar writes books, plays his games, and continues...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
When asked about the importance and role of the footnotes in his book, author Junot Diaz said that he first wanted to create a double narrative, meaning two stories carried on simultaneously. The...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "purpose". The fuku itself can be defined most closely as a curse, so I guess the purpose of a fuku would simply be to doom a person/family/country to death...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What a great question! I think that there is more than one answer, but a few likely theories come to mind. Aside from just a stylistic choice (meaning that Junot Diaz maybe just liked the sound...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Earlier the three dashes are used by Oscar to stand for words he dare not say, lest he be cursed by the fuku: "I Love You." I think the Mongoose is saying the same thing. The Mongoose sees Oscar...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
There are two conflicts primarily present in this story. The first one is man vs. society. From Oscar's family history in the Dominican Republic, readers learn that discriminatory behavior...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
There are many key familial relationships throughout the novel. First, let's just start with a family tree: Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral - husband of Socorro Cabral Abelard and Socorro are the...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The answer to your first question is not specifically stated in the novel, but it can be deduced by observing the chapter titles as well as their content. The first chapter is entitled...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The relationship between Yunior and Lola in this story is shown to be a relationship between two people that genuinely love each other. However, the problem is that Yunior, as a stereotypical...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
All the characters in the novel are like comic book characters: they have mental and physical powers that both make them great and curse them at the same time. This is also the recipe for a tragic...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Directly, once. This incident occurs after he finds Jenni committing adultery. Oscar drinks heavily and then decides that due to the curse (fuku), he should throw himself off a bridge. However,...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The simple answer to this question is that because Oscar's family lived through the trauma of Trujillo's dictatorship, he was raised in the shadow of that pain. His grandfather protected his family...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar is a quester, first for women and then for love. In between, he redefines himself and his quest as he learns more about himself, his...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What is interesting about this novel is that the three blank words that Yunior omits to include at the end of the novel are not the only instance when this occurs. There are plenty of times when...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Your question identifies the difficulty that we have as readers in identifying the narrators of this prize-winning story. You are right in noting that the story is told from the perspective of two...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
There are really three narrators in Diaz's novel: the old Yunior ("The Watcher"), Lola, and the young Yunior. The old Yunior narrates most of the novel. He's the one with all the footnotes. Near...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Near the beginning of The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, it is mentioned that Oscar's sister, Lola was raped by a neighbor when she was eight years old. Interestingly, this is said by the...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Yunio, the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, footnotes to establish ethos, or credibility and trust of the author, and pathos, past "suffering" of Dominicans. Because he is an...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the DR is a character unto itself. Like Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, Trujillo uses the land and its resources to spy, seduce, and destroy its...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz says he wanted to make his readers feel like immigrants in Oscar Wao. He does this by using Spanglish, pop culture references, sci-fi fantasy allusions, esoteric references to...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I don't think that Beli is intentionally mean to her children. She had a really tough life under Trujillo's regime in the DR--she lost most of her family and was abused horribly before finally...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
When the mongoose first appears in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz includes a footnote that says "the Mongoose has proven itself to be an enemy of kingly chariots, chains, and...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Oscar's voice is so realistic, in the hurt that is conveyed by Diaz's masterful use of images. He "shows" how nerdy and out of touch with the dating scene Oscar is in this scene: What had hurt,...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Consider the following: Beli and Lola are very similar in terms of personality. How does this cause difficulties between the two women? How is Oscar different from his mother? How do these...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Chapter five of Junot Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tells the story of Oscar's grandfather, Abelard. The title of the chapter, "Poor Abelard," provides the reader with foreshadowing about...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao begins with poet Derek Walcott's lines: “I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” So, Diaz's focus is on...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz opens his novel of clashing cultures, stereotypes, dreams of a better life and the curse of the doomed with a description of an ancient African curse that plays a prominent role in The...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
A first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men. And out of this disillusionment and turmoil sprang Beli's first adult oath, one that would follow her into...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
There are three important women in the novel: La Inca, Beli, and Lola. Each are strong women who battle each other, men, the fuku, their past, their color, and--most importantly--stereotypes (or...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Beli (Oscar’s mother) is young and living well in the Dominican Republic with La Inca. Beli attends the best school and hates it, becoming defensive, belligerent, and lonely. Men notice Beli...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao shows the problems of the Dominican male's machismo toward women, as exemplified by the fuku, or the curse that Trujillo and his cruelty and...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Within works of fiction, flash backs (analepses) and flash forwards (or prolepses) are literary devices that an author uses to interrupt the current time in the novel and take the narrative...