In the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the Dominican culture is told through a stereotypical Dominican named Yunior. As stated in the title, the novel discusses Oscar Wao’s brief life through his family’s curse called Fukú. The history of his family is presented through their downfalls in love, which overtime accumulates into a burden for Oscar to experience the same events his family members had once experienced. This Fukú that has been lurking within the Cabral family’s history from the Dominican Republic to the United States is commonly found through dysfunctional relationships between men and women. The known concept in relationships called love transforms into a corrupted power source for abuse based on the …show more content…
Anticipation for the worse becomes apparent when Trujillo “dismissed Abelard with a flick of [the] wrist” (233) when Abelard brought only himself to the party. Abelard gradually feels like every invitation for any occasion was as if it was a “life-or-death affair” (233). In other words, choosing not to bring his family to a party can be a death sentence for him or even involving his family can cause his wife or daughter’s life to be taken. Abelard having this belief sways him to go out with his friends and excessively drink to prove that everything appears to be normal in his everyday life. With a drunk Abelard comes with risky quips that can cause problems to arise. While he is being helped by his friends to put the bureau in his Packard, he comments about dead bodies not being in his trunk. The recalled event is still arguable; however, Abelard’s fate was already decided. Whether he said “[n]ope, no dead bodies here” or “[n]ope, no dead bodies here, Trujillo must have cleaned them out for me” (234-235). With a simple mention of Trujillo, Abelard is arrested for slander against the “president.” His time in prison served as a solid foundation for Fukú; but, the worse was still yet to come. Once Sorocco, his wife, visited him, his third/final daughter was unveiled. This becomes the big question for Abelard, whether it is …show more content…
Beli grew up in a foster family due to the Fukú her father created, which cost her the lives of her family. The foster family enslaved her and mistreated her horribly. The mistreatment her foster family inflicted on her led to the adoption of Beli by La Inca. Beli, like Oscar, has an infatuation with the opposite sex. This infatuation leads her to become pregnant with a man known as the “Gangster” (119). As one can tell, the label for the man that impregnated Beli seems to allude to the Fukú her father created. The Gangster seems to be a physical version of the Fukú, which coincides with the abuse Beli endures for him. Beli’s persistence leads her into a life threatening event during her relationship with the Gangster. Beli reveals to the Gangster that she is pregnant; however, as expected, “[i]n her memory he never told her to get rid of it” (137). Like mother like son, Beli optimistically perceives the worse statements in a good way to her liking. This perception blinds her on taking note of any suspicious activity that the Gangster commits. As a result, she learns, at a later time, that the Gangster is “married to…[a] Trujillo” (138). Notice a direct connection made between Beli and Abelard through Trujillo. Both, Beli and Abelard, begin to suffer due to a corrupted political power in the Dominican Republic, which created the Fukú to exist within the Cabral
“The Mulatto” (1837) was created by Victor Séjour and “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” (1828) created by S. In “The Mulatto” and “Theresa, A Haytien Tale”, both narratives have a revolving theme and this is freedom. Zélie and Theresa both represented freedom by not acknowledging the statutes of life and also revealing what courage is. They accomplished this in two contrasting ways, but both women symbolize who women are. “Theresa, A Haytien Tale” expresses a tale on three figures, Madam Paulina, Theresa, and Amanda.
There’s a direct relationship between the canefields and violence in the book, there had to be a reason for this. The canefields in the Dominican Republic was where the slaves worked when the Spanish colonizers came to the country, they were the cotton fields of the Dominican Republic. This is also when the fuku, or curse, was brought over the Dominican Republic from Europe as the narrator claims. ”It is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fuku on the world, and we’ve all been in the shit ever since” (page 1). This must mean that canefields are part of the fuku the Europeans brought along.
In the introduction to the novel, the narrator says,” For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history: Trujillo, one of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961 with an implacable ruthless brutality” (2). These notes were important in our reading to understand the extent to which Trujillo was responsible for the family’s fukú. In part 3, we learn about Lola and Oscar’s mother Beli. A woman who was unfortunate to live in the time of Trujillo, and who lost her parents because of this dictatorship. This is the beginning point for the fukú that the family experiences in the novel.
They live in various dilapidated hotels in Montreal’s red light district. As Karl Marx famously said “[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Likewise, the foundation that affected Baby’s development was fractured prior to her birth. Baby was born in an unstable and derelict environment, paired with minimal parental support from a heroin addicted father, which hindered her childhood development.
“You and Trujillo,” Papá says a little loudly, and in this clear peaceful night they all fall silent. Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and repeat them down at security. Don Enrique claims Trujillo needs help in running this country. Don Enrique’s daughter says it’s about time women took over the government. Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much” ( Alvarez 10).
The character Yunior, being the narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is all in good reason being he is the standing of true Dominican male. Yunior emulates the Dominican American stereotypes of masculinity. Stereotyped that a man must be dominate, powerful, and with a attractive physic, Dominicans are expected to come with a violent nature and through physical violence and verbal aggression, act on an increased sexual drive without that masculine persona and things Oscars has a hard time crossing into those steps of manhood. From jump, it seems like Oscar in relation to the title isn’t the outsider and portrayed to enhance an image of the narrator in the mind of the reader. Then through a break down argument it became clear
He also introduces his co-worker, friends and family and the relationship he has amongst them. As he does this, he mentions the importance of alcohol and its role that it plays in his daily life and interactions with these individuals. To starts, there is Greer who is Augusten’s partner
In short, Diaz depicts how close people’s actions influence other’s personalities. His theme of family relationship is expressed beautifully through his characters and symbols. As we can see Yunior’s change; we have some hope that we will change bad Karma through our
As a Dominican-American attempting to drop the Dominican, Yunior denies the existence of fukú as curses and the supernatural are taboo in America. Outwardly, Yunior attributes the continual misfortunes of the Cabrals and numerous Dominicans to “natural tragedy,” but it becomes clear that Yunior is playing the same game as before. Yunior’s camouflaged historical knowledge and analytical skills attribute the diaspora to a much deeper root cause than “natural tragedy,” fukú. Rationally, it is easy to blame the events that happen in the story on “natural tragedy,” but that would be to ignore hundreds of years of a curse, originally inflicted by the Admiral and ‘the man who rowed him ashore’. “The Europeans [who caused the first diaspora in the Americas] were the original fukú, no stopping them.”
Abelard and Heloise’s tragic love story has touched people’s hearts, and will continue to do so for a long
This could only have been done by the supernatural force: Fuku. Through Oscar and Beli’s life experiences, Diaz conveys that the supernatural - the Dominican Republic curse “fuku”
Mr. Brown allows his 17 year old son Johnny to go to his friend Thomas’s 18th birthday party. Little does Mr. Brown know is that Thomas’s parents’ are out of town and there would be alcohol in Thomas’s party. Johnny buys 3 six packs of Corona beer from the corner store across the street from his house that illegally sells alcohol to those under the legal age, and Thomas steals 2 bottles of Absolut Vodka from his father’s wine cabinet. During this party, the group of teenagers that were in the party begins binge drinking and socializing for about 30 minutes until Johnny begins vomiting and complaining about his breathing pattern being too slow. The other teens begin panicking and asking each other what to do.
Then she scolds herself. She should thank her mother for leaving,” (p. 24) from which Nazario takes a severe circumstance of Belky not seeing her mother and making it relatable by showing Belky’s guilt for feeling resentment toward her mother when her mother is making grave sacrifices to care for
Alvarez and her family have a lot of trauma considering there lives in the dominican republic and living under the dictator,through it all alvarez's parents raised a daughter who would share their story in a fashionable matter that told the story how it was.
He also knows not to tell on his mom’s drinking problem, which he denotes as her “illness”, to his father, in order not to get her into trouble. At the same