The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

In Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he is telling the story of a Dominican family but mainly about the son, Oscar de Leon. The book opens with the story of Oscar as a child and him having two girlfriends at the same time. The older people in town see him as a ladies man and encourage him. The boy and the two girls all break up and his life seemed to be on a steady decline since then. He grows up to become a nerdy, fat, and awkward adolescence with few friends and even less interest from girls. This phase persists throughout his life and he never develops out of the nerdy boy he was as a child. The Dominican Republic was a hostile and poor place during the time of the novel. The dictator Trujillo controls the lives of the people in the country. This influenced the de Leon family’s present and future. Diaz develops the story by using the superstition, the cane field, and male dominance of the Dominican men

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao family is a strong aspect that influences the characters decisions and actions. Oscar is the main character who majority of the book follows through his short life. His sister is Lola, who parts of the book also follow in order to gain access into their family story. Beli is his mother, who is a feared and respected woman in their community. The narrator and boyfriend of Lola is Yunior. He meets Oscar in college and lives with him. La Inca is Beli’s mother, she adopted Beli at the age of nine and raised her as her own. The Gangster is a man Beli meets and falls in love with at an early age. He causes trouble in her life from her family and his own family that he never said he had.

In the novel there is a curse called the fuku. The people of the Dominican Republic believe ...

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...to find someone who accepted him and loved him for who he really was. Oscar only revealed he lost his virginity after he died. He left Yunior a letter telling him he lost it to Ybon when they went on vacation.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz shows how the Dominican Republic influenced the superstitions, the Cane fields, and the male dominance. In the end Oscar dies because of the love he spent his life searching for. He sees that he gained it but at the cost of his life. He expresses the happiness of love in the end right before he died. The rest of the family deals with the death of Oscar differently. Beli’s loses her will to fight and the cancer returns and she dies ten months later. Lola and Yunior relationship never restarts and both get married to other people and have children. They only see each other occasionally and only speak of Oscar.