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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...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Lola is the sister of Oscar, the main character in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Lola is Oscar's older sister and, as such, she is very protective of him. This behavior is a stark...
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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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
The theme that is raised in this novel that can be clearly related to the above quote is that of how Oscar is presented as a kind of anti-hero in this novel. He is perhaps one of the most unlikely...
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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
It's shown in the begging as a curse to his family and occurs throughout the novel. The fuku curses his family and his generations yet to exist.
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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
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
Yunior
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a post-modern novel and, as such, a conscious blending of many styles and media, including the following: Coming-of-age story (Bildungsroman) Immigrant...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Regarding this passage from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz, there are some important literary devices of which to make note. The first line makes use of inference, which is...
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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
Beli is isolated early on in here life when she was shuffled around her various foster homes and her years in school. She had no Friends and only La Inca as someone who truely loved her.
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Beli's life influences her children's life through her behavior. For example when Lola had approached her at the age of eight and mentioned being rapped Beli's response towards Lola, which was for...
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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
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
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
This is a difficult question! Remember that "narrative" is just a fancy word for "story". So first you have to figure out which story is BEING re-written. It seems like Diaz is writing for a US...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Díaz writes in The Brief Wondrous Life...about the Trujillo dictatorship time period of the Dominican Republic and about contemporary New Jersey. He blends these stories using different...
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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
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
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
I think it's important to remember that fuku is portrayed almost as a self-fulfilling phenomenon, and so long as the characters believe in its strength, it is capable of extending its power. While...
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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
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
I think the implicit answer for both is that they may have grown up thinking they were "a nobody," but once they accept who they are, they become "a nation." Walcott, or Shabine (the speaker in the...
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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
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
I think that the discussion questions I would select would be connected to the major themes in the work. I would ask questions such as how the role and power of love is depicted in its many forms...
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
To me the faceless man first of all symbolises fear; Beli and Oscar see the faceless as they are being taken to the canefields. Second, he is a symbol of the monsterous executors of the dictator's...
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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
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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
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
Here are some things to think about: Objectivity. Yunior knows Oscar, but not as well or in the same way as Beli and Lola know him. How would the story be different if Lola was telling it? Would...