Oscar Wao

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Life of Oscar Wao: A Reflection of the Past

Being a colored nerd is difficult, but being a Dominican immigrant colored nerd is virtually hopeless. Oscar lives in a world that reflects the history of his country. In Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the use of historical references is important to the book as a whole in order to understand the present day life of Oscar. Although the book is about Oscar, a majority of the novel tells the story of the de León family history and their life according to the fukú curse. For Oscar’s family, being an immigrant was difficult due to how history has affected the family. Living in the Dominican Republic during the time of a horrible dictatorship was not an easy life for Oscar’s mother Belicia. The way that she has been treated and her family has been treated is a reflection of how Oscar’s identity has been shaped. For Oscar, being a Dominican immigrant, lives a life struggle after struggle in order to prove to others how truly Dominican he is despite what others think. While people think he is the complete opposite of a masculine Dominican, Oscar tries to prove them wrong. His struggle to find love and be in a stable relationship also reflects the way his family’s romantic history with the constantly failed relationships. All the mishaps, events, and unavoidable conflicts in Oscar’s life are a direct representation of the history of his family’s past. The cultural, political, and family history explains the similarities between the past and present that ultimately leads Oscar to his inevitable fate.
The story of Oscar revolves heavily around the family’s curse and how everyone occupying in the Caribbean lived with a curse. One of the roles of history in the book is...

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...life when he finally decides to go after the woman of his dreams, despite the consequences. In the story, history tends to really repeat itself for Oscar. What happened to Oscar related closely to what happened to Belicia in the past, from getting into unhealthy relationships to getting beat in cane fields due to those relationships. The role of history tends to act as a vehicle to foreshadow the events in Oscar’s life in the future. If history had not happened the way it did, with Trujillo’s spread of terror, Oscar and Lola would not have had a life in New Jersey to escape the evil. If Oscar never left the Dominican Republic, his fragile self-esteem would have been in a worse situation than how it was now. Although his family had a chance to escape to New Jersey, Oscar’s attempt to escape was not successful because his life ended right back where it started.

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