What is the story the brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz tells the story of Oscar, a Dominican-American boy who is obsessed with science fiction, fantasy, and finding love, and whose family is haunted by a generational curse. Explore a character analysis of Yunior, plot summary, and important quotes.
What is the setting of the brief Wondrous Life of Oscar?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Grape is a novel written by Dominican American author Junot Díaz, published in 2007. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey in the United States, where Díaz was raised, and it deals with the Dominican Republic experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo.
What are some of the best books about Oscar Wao?
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Penguin Audio. pp. Prologue. ^ Zlotchew, Dr. Clark. Varieties of Magical Realism. New Jersey: Academic Press ENE, 2007. p. 15 ^ García Márquez, Gabriel (2014). One Hundred Years of Solitude. London: Penguin Books. p. 14. ^ a b Merla-Watson, Cathryn Josefina (March 15, 2017).
What awards did Oscar Wao win in 2008?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao went on to win numerous awards in 2008, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
How long is the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoFirst edition hardcoverAuthorJunot DíazPublication dateSeptember 6, 2007Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)Pages352 pp8 more rows
Is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a good book?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao declared 21st century's best novel so far. A group of American critics has named Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, an ingenious take on the life of an overweight Dominican-American nerd, as the best novel of the 21st century to date.
What is the main theme of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
Love and Loss. While the novel follows many threads in Oscar's life, it is primarily concerned with love in all its varied forms. Like many coming-of-age novels, Oscar's search for maturity takes the form of a search for romantic love, but the themes of love also go further than that in the novel.
Who does Oscar Wao fall in love with?
Ybón PimentelYbón Pimentel Oscar's final love interest. Oscar fell in love with Ybón during the summer he spent in the Dominican Republic with his family. About ten years older than Oscar and an alcoholic, Ybón was a “semiretired” prostitute who lived two houses down from La Inca.
Why is Oscar called Wao?
Second, he combines English and Spanish language influences, which he does throughout the novel. See, some of Oscar's classmates think he looks like the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. But because their first language is Spanish, they pronounce "Wilde" as "Wao." And that Spanish-inflected nickname sticks.
What is considered the first domestic fiction novel?
Sedgwick's groundbreaking work: Domestic fiction rose to popularity around the 1830s on the heels of Catharine Maria Sedgwick's A New-England Tale (1822), considered the first domestic novel.
What is the Fuku curse?
The fuku is thought to be a “curse or a doom of some kind” (Diaz 1) that would be cast upon any individual or family who plotted against or even just did not respect the Dominican dictator Trujillo. Fuku is widely accepted among Dominicans as a primary cause of misfortune.
Who is the main character in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
Yunior de Las CasasOscar de LeónHypatía Belicia CabralAbelardLolaThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao/Characters
Does Oscar Wao lose his virginity?
He lost his virginity to the older woman, and though he enjoyed the act of sex, he felt more moved by the everyday intimacies of simply being with another person. The last thing Oscar ever wrote concluded ecstatically: “So this is what everybody's always talking about! . . .
Does Oscar Wao get a girlfriend?
Seven-year-old Oscar has two girlfriends: Marzita Chacón and Olga Polanco. As you might guess, these relationships are pretty innocent. One day, Marzita tells Oscar that he has to choose either her or Olga.
Who finds Oscar after beating?
Oscar's beating significantly changes his worldview, clarifying how important Ybón is to him and cementing the perceived reality of the curse in his life. Oscar tries to get himself to Ybón's house, but sees that her car isn't there. Finally, three days after the beating, Ybón comes to visit Oscar.
Where is the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao set?
Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey in the United States, where Díaz was raised, and it deals with the Dominican Republic experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo. The book chronicles both the life of Oscar de ...
Who wrote the brief wonderful life of Oscar Wao?
(February 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a novel written by Dominican American author Junot Díaz, published in 2007.
How do Yunior and Oscar become friends?
Despite their differences, Yunior and Oscar become important to each other and develop an unusual friendship . As Oscar has no father or brothers, Yunior is the only male with whom he can discuss his romantic yearnings; Yunior is his access into masculinity. As for Yunior, Oscar models an alternative form of masculinity and ultimately pushes him to reexamine his ideas about manhood. VanBeest points out that in spite Oscar's lack of machismo, he possesses "other masculine traits that Yunior admires." For example, Yunior envies the way Oscar can develop friendships with women (like Jenni) and talk to them about non-sexual topics. He also respects Oscar's writing style and his ability to "write dialogue, crack snappy exposition, keep the narrative moving" (173). Finally, although Oscar dies in the end, Yunior admires how he was able to achieve real intimacy with a girl by being loving, faithful and vulnerable. VanBeest argues that Oscar "succeeds in educating Yunior, indirectly, in the responsibilities of manhood; after Oscar's death, Yunior claims that it is Oscar's influence that encourages him to stop following the dictates of el machismo and finally settle down and get married." At the end of the novel, Yunior manages to develop a healthier form of masculinity that allows him to love others and to achieve intimacy.
What awards did Oscar Wao win?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao went on to win numerous awards in 2008, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
What is Oscar's greatest fear?
His great fear is that he will die a virgin. After high school, Oscar attends Rutgers University. His sister's boyfriend Yunior (the narrator of much of the novel) moves in with Oscar and tries to help him get in shape and become more "normal".
What is the language of the book "Oscar"?
Oscar lives his life surrounded by the culture of fantasy and as Oscar describes them, "the more speculative genres", and the language of these cultures is strewn throughout the book along with Spanish. Brief phrases relating to games like Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop role-playing game terms are used as common colloquialisms: "He [Oscar] could have refused, could have made a saving throw against Torture, but instead he went with the flow."
What is the first person narrative in Oscar's sister?
The novel contains significant exposition on Oscar's family history. One section is a first person narrative from the perspective of Oscar's sister, Lola, explaining her struggles to get along with their headstrong mother, Beli.
Summary
Read our full plot summary and analysis of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, scene by scene break-downs, and more.
Characters
See a complete list of the characters in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and in-depth analyses of Yunior, Oscar de León (“Oscar Wao”), Lola de León, Belicia de León (“Beli”), and Abelard Luis Cabral.
Literary Devices
Here's where you'll find analysis of the literary devices in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, from the major themes to motifs, symbols, and more.
Quotes
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Quick Quizzes
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Essays
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Further Study
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Who is Oscar's mother?
The narrator returns again, going further back in the family timeline to tell the story of Oscar and Lola ’s mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral. He describes her as a Dominican princess, with a beautiful body, dark skin, and the same desire to be elsewhere that her daughter had.
What does the narrator bring back in The Lord of the Rings?
The narrator brings back his love of fantasy (The Lord of the Rings has an especially significant meaning to Yunior and Oscar that will be explained in Chapter 4) and reinforces his idea that the DR follows a fantasy narrative particularly well.
What does Beli love about the gangster?
Once Beli has decided to love the Gangster, she loves as hard as her son ( Oscar) will decades later. The Gangster reciprocates and promises her a future far more beautiful than he can deliver. His adoration supports Beli, and she begins to love her own skin, and even the huge scar on her back, as much as he does. She boasts to the rest of Baní that he will take her to a beautiful house in Miami, not knowing that he is currently out of Trujillo’ s favor due to the mistake in Cuba. Beli focuses all her energy on the Gangster, ignoring everyone’s poor opinions of him, and she is soon fired from the restaurant. She ignores every warning about Trujillo’s fragile position and revels in being in love.
What is the name of the school Beli goes to?
La Chica de Mi Escuela (The Girl from My School). When Beli is 13, La Inca gets her a scholarship to the best private school on the island, called El Redentor. However, Beli does not fit in there because of her dark skin and her rough upbringing with the foster family. Beli puts up a tough girl attitude to deal with the teasing, overreacting to the smallest insults until no one will so much as speak to her. The narrator compares her experience to the famous Dominican movie “In the Time of the Butterflies,” saying it was nothing like that.
What does Beli feel like in La Inca?
The narrator says that Beli would have felt like that no matter where she grew up, and is extra unlucky to have been born on an unescapable island such as the DR in the 1950s.
What does La Inca know about Beli?
When La Inca hears that Beli has been taken, she knows that the “Doom of the Cabrals” has found Beli at last. Remembering the proud lineage of the Cabrals, La Inca begins to fervently pray for Beli’s survival. She is joined by the other neighborhood women, despite the contempt they previously had for Beli.
Is Beli in private school?
The private school experience gives Beli both a significant mark of privilege and ties her into a specific tradition of Latino and Dominican “telenovelas” (soap operas) in which school is an important rite of passage. Though Beli struggles like her son Oscar to assert her identity despite her appearance, her troubles have less to do with her skin color and ethnicity than with her class background. “In the Time of the Butterflies” also features a girl at a private school on scholarship, but the girl in the movie is befriended and ultimately accepted into upper-crust Dominican society—although this movie ends in tragedy as well.
Overview
Style
Instead of Díaz directly telling the story to the reader, he creates an aesthetic distance by speaking through the novel's narrator Yunior. Yunior provides analysis and commentary for the events he is relaying in the novel. His speech often exemplifies code switching, switching rapidly from a lively, Caribbean-inflected vernacular, replete with frequent usage of profanity to wordy, eloquent, and academic prose. This runs in parallel to several central themes of the novel regard…
Concept
The book chronicles the life of Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, who is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels and with falling in love, as well as with the curse that has plagued his family for generations.
The middle sections of the novel center on the lives of Oscar's runaway sister, …
Plot
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a young age, is unable to find love, largely because he is a nerd obsessed with science fiction and comic books. His great fear is that he will die a virgin.
After high school, Oscar attends Rutgers University. His sister's boyfriend Yunior (the narrator of …
Themes and motifs
Mongooses appear throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as guardians of the family. Historically, the mongoose was imported from Asia during the 18th century. Mongooses were imported to tropical islands such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Hawaii. Used to protect sugar cane fields from rat infestations, mongoose were pivotal in the DR's growing sugar economy. While the mongoose is transplanted from Asia, it retroactively becomes a "norm" withi…
Literary allusions
Comic books, science-fiction, and fantasy literature all play an important role in Oscar's upbringing and identity, and each is incorporated into the novel to reflect the world he lives in. Díaz has said that to dismiss the novel's reflexivity with fiction and fantasy is to do to the novel "exactly what Oscar suffered from, which is that...Oscar's interests, his views of the world, were dismissed as illegitimate, as unimportant, as make-believe", and that the novel asks the reader "to take not onl…
Critical reception
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was widely praised and appeared in a number of "best of the year" book lists. The book won the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize, the Dayton Peace Prize in Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. New York magazine named it the Best Novel of the Year and Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it the best work of fiction published in 2007, praising it as "a massive, heaving, sparking tragicomedy". …
Adaptations
A staged version of the novel, called Fukú Americanus, was adapted by Sean San Jose and co-directed by San Jose and Marc Bamuthi Joseph through San Jose's Campo Santo theatre company in 2009. The production received mixed reviews, with critic Robert Hurwitt stating that "'Fukú' doesn't show us how that works or what the curse has to do with anything ... for that, you have to read the book."