The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Recently Answered Questions

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Oscar is surprisingly absent for most of the novel. What can we learn from that?
  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,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Was Oscar a real person?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What role does the idea of what defines true masculinity play in the novel 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Is the novel The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Waoreally about Oscar Was? If so, what evidence can you cite from the novel to support your answer? If not, what do you think the novel is about, and what...
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Waoattacks the assumption that American identity, or any national or personal identity, is uniform. What other assumptions do you think the novel attacks? Why would it...
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is an example fromThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz that illustrates that Oscar has different interests than his peers?  
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Why does the narrator switch to first person in the second chapter when writing about lola? Yunior is obviously the narrator but it changes at certain points.  What is the purpose and name of this...
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the summary for Chapter 5 of 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How does Oscar acheive the theme of American Dream in 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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How do the characters in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao try to control their identity against the power of the fuku?
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Where is Fuku shown in the novel, and how does it affect Oscar? do you think that fuku is the reason oscar is so hesitant with love? if so why
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What are some themes of the book 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How are the tone/theme of the novel filtered througthout 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Describe the relationship between La Inca and Beli.  
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is a good argument that could be used in an essay to describe the impact of fuku and what Junot Diaz is saying about it in this novel?
  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...

  3 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  I need to write an argumentative essay on what Junot Diaz was trying to convey in relation to some aspect of the human experience. Some of the options to write about are: Love, mother daughter...
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Who was the gangster in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao married to and why?
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What do you think of Oscar’s obsession with the science fiction and fantasy genres?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the summary for Chapter 4 of 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the significance of the footnotes in 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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the purpose of the fuku?
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the effect of incorporating Spanish words into the story of 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What does the Mongoose say to Oscar at the canefield? Near the end of the novel, Oscar Wao is on the brink of death, and he sees the mongoose, and it saids something like, "-----   -----  -----"...
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the conflict of the story, 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...

  4 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is/are the familial relationships in 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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  At what age did Oscar die? And how did he die?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  I need to analyze the relationship between Yunior with Lola and Oscar with Ybon in 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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Many of the characters try to teach Oscar many things, especially Yunior, who tries to teach him how to lose weight, and many other things. How much does Oscar actually learn from Yunior at the end?...
  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...

  3 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  In The Brief, Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, how many times does Oscar attemptsuicide?
  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,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How is the drama of Oscar Wao's life shaped and complicated by the contours of Dominican history, both under Rafael Trujillo and in the long, contentious aftermath of his dictatorship?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How does Oscar's character change throughout the story?
  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...

  3 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, why does Yunior leave the three words blank twice towards the end of the novel?
  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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Are Yunior and the unnamed narrator one and the same person in 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Why does Yunior narrate the story about the Cabrals? What investment does he have in it? Silence dominates the novel; what are his silences? On page 172 he seems to understand Elvish, though he...
  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...

  3 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Who was raped at the age of eight?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  In terms of narrative technique, why did the writer incorporate footnotes, and what are the importance of the footnotes in 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...

  2 Educator Answers

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Diaz uses his characters to show the destructive nature of the gender relations/roles of the D.R. using his characters. How & what characters? The Brief Wonderous 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How this novel is effective as regards to the latino immigrant expericence in the United States?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Why was Oscar's mother mean to him in 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What does the mongoose represent?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How does the author use sarcasm to his characters and how he portrays members of both sexes? How does the author use sarcasm and portray gender roles in 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,...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Why does Oscar have a better relationship with his mother than Lola does? How do their relationships differ?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the summary of chapter five in 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What are some perceptions of other cultures in the 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  I need a summary and analysis of Junot Diaz's novel 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Considering Belicia's experiences in the Dominican Republic why does she treat Lola the way she does in The Brief Wonderous 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  Characterize the portraits of women in the novel? What do we learn from the way women are portrayed? What is left out, what is emphasized?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is the summary for Chapter 3 of 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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  How does the hypermaleness affect Oscar? What are the problems of hypermaleness?
  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...

  1 Educator Answer

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  What is significant about time switching back and fourth in 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...

  2 Educator Answers