revolving around Junot Díaz’s novel, The Brief Life Of Oscar Wao

User Generated

bynynajn

Humanities

Description

This paper will answer one question (your choice from this list) revolving around Junot Díaz’s novel, The Brief Life Of Oscar Wao. While your reflections, attitudes about the book are up to you, you must include at least three examples from the book to back up your claims (along with page numbers). These questions are:

1.) How effectively does the book use the mythical and/or historical past to inform the present?

2.) What are the different ways that the notion of power is used throughout the novel, and how convincing is the narrator’s claim (on page 97) that, “Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers. Like, after all, recognizes like.”

3.) How much is skin tone a factor in the character’s actions, or fate, and is the novel an effective presentation of this issue?

4.) How useful is the novel’s use of language hybridity, especially in terms of character and narrative?

5.) How effective is the use of pop culture (film, comic book references) and does this constitute another language?

Along with your own thoughts, you may include references to critiques of the novel (with appropriate bibliographic citations). One such recommended secondary source is Christopher Gonzalez’s book, Reading Junot Díaz, which is available as an ebook online

User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Narrative Analysis
I.
II.
III.

Introduction
Body
Conclusion


Running head: NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

1

Narrative Analysis
Name
Institution

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

2
Narrative Analysis
Introduction

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a fictional narrative that chronicles the life of
Oscar de Leon, a Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey. The novel incorporates different
elements of neologisms as well as fantasy while referring to other books and fictional films. The
author utilizes all these elements to inform the reader on the many different facets of the
narrative while at the same time create interest in a story that would otherwise have been flaccid.
The author creates a multi-generational story that uses historical past and mythical fantasy to
elaborate on the present that is affecting Oscar’s life. Oscar’s life finds importance and
practicability in an ancient past that is conjured in mythic and magic realism.
The use of secondary voices allows the author to narrate to the reader the history of Oscar
and create a background that the present can find significance in lean’s turbulent life. From the
onset, the author uses secondary voices to guide the story to a distant past that relates to Oscar’s
life and the challenges that continue to face Oscar in the present. Oscar sister’s voice is used to
recoup the past struggles with their headstrong mother, Beli. Through her voice, the author can
create a background of Beli’s childhood and relate that to Oscar’s current self-esteem problem.
Also, through such a voice, one can understand Oscar’s character, his challenge as an introvert,
and the society in which he finds himself in.
Diaz's voice is muffled, and the author instead creates an aesthetic distance that allows
the exemplification of different narration styles. These techniques adopt academic prose,
eloquence, vernacular, and profanity to shift the reader’s attention from one pocket of history to
another. For instance, when Yunior’s voice adopts a Caribbean-infected vernacular, the reader is
drawn from the present New Jersey environment into a distant past in the Dominican Republic.

NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

3

The author also incorporates English and Spanish as he tries to drift from Oscar’s real intent to
his current state of oblivion. The reader can find coherence through the authors change in...


Anonymous
Excellent resource! Really helped me get the gist of things.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Related Tags