I have always wondered how stories from the past have been kept alive so that people today can hear about them. I know Moses was not walking around Egypt with his laptop typing his experiences so that we could learn about them today. Although this example is thousands of years old, I have the same curiosity about events that have happened more recently. For example, during the Second World War, the Germans were highly organized and made to sure not to keep a paper trail so the world would not know what was happening. However, while I was in Poland I heard the stories and experience from the survivors themselves and it enhanced my connection and made their history more of a reality. In the book, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” by Junot Diaz, the narrator of the story, Yunior, attempts to give the reader the same sense of living history through first hand accounts, personal stories and memories he gained from Oscar. Although these stories have been passed on through families it does not always mean the stories being told are fully accurate. There are still some empty spaces in these stories that cannot be filled because of the discrepancies that have occurred through the passing of the stories from generation to generation. For example, we see in one instance that the story of Abelard can end in different ways but we still receive knowledge about the Trujillo dictatorship. Towards the end of the novel Yunior is not fully sure what Oscar’s intentions were with his writings, which is why the page is kept blank. This adds to the idea that even though stories are being passed on through families, there will always be tiny holes. However, even though it’s similar to an interpration of the story and not fully accurate, the personal stories and memories provided by Yunior allow the reader to have a clearer understanding of what happened during that historical time. The idea of learning and examining the past in a time when no records…
