Dominican Fantasies, Written and Unwritten:
The use of science fiction in the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Juan Diaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao details the life of an overweight Dominican boy who has aspirations of being a romantic hero that are continually thwarted by his great size and unattractive physical appearance. However, one of the dominant themes of the book is that appearances can deceive. Despite the fact that he is ugly on the outside, Oscar has a beautiful soul. His inner life is at odds with his outer life. One way in which Oscar deals with this is by escaping into a world of fantasy novels and characters. Diaz's coming-of-age novel is thus very much a book 'about' other books, just as much as it is a book about a man's life. Its postmodern nature is clear in the sense that the novels and cultural myths to which it is responding are just as powerful and important to Oscar as the actual, exterior narrative thread of Oscar's life.
This is manifested in the way that Oscar's reading choices challenge stereotypes, both of what it means to be a stereotypical 'nerd' and what it means to be Latino. The common cultural stereotype of the Latino man is someone who is not particularly intellectual and acts as a 'player.' Oscar is at best able to function as a 'player' only in science fiction role-playing, not in the field of romance. Oscar's persona also contradicts the common stereotype of what a typical science fiction 'geek should look like. He is Latino, despite the fact that science fiction tends to be dominated by a fanbase of white males. Oscar decries this and tries to defy it, just as he tries to defy his overweight body when...
(Diaz) Clearly, Junot Diaz is using symbolism throughout the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, to illustrate how a host of events would shape the kind of person that Oscar would become. This is accomplished by looking at: science fiction and how it helped Oscar to escape. Early on this was used to show the way he dealt with: the sense of isolationism and rejection he felt in
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao There is an obsession with obesity in the United States, and that obsession is also seen in a number of other countries (Pool, 24). One of the most significant works of fiction that deals with that issue is Junot Diaz's book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In the book, the main character -- Oscar -- is obese (Junot, 8). He lives in New Jersey
However, this may not have been Diaz's intention at all. He may have simply been trying to emphasize the third person viewpoint and that the reader is merely witnessing the events. This opening statement requires the reader to place themselves in a position somewhere, hovering above the lives of the characters, viewing them from an unattached vantage point. This is much the way in which one views an ant hill.
Sexual Fantasy: Coming of Age in Modern America Portnoy's Complaint and The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao are two bildungsroman (coming of age stories) that suggest there are profound discrepancies between exterior and interior realities. Like The Bonfire of the Vanities, another classic chronicle of the tension between social personas and the dark underbelly of individual psychologies, these stories suggest that to be an American is to have a divided
Diaz's Examination Of Culture: Clashes And Identities Diaz's Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a combination of cultural experiences and influences that are as rich and imaginative as the stories the book contains. Within the main character, Oscar, lies the power to both transcend definition of culture and become victim or prey of a specific culture's stereotypes and norms. Oscar is an obese, alienated person within his own culture, but he
Although the events and characters' reactions to them have their differences in the interest of plot variety, similarities between the cases far outweigh the differences. Not only are the events that Nel and Crowe experience and their reactions to them similar, but also both characters have striking revelations at the end of their stories that suggest the importance of the events. In Nel's case, the remembering "the death of chicken
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