Oscar Wao discussion
I. Discuss an element of Fiction
I decided to tackle three elements of fiction from the story because I personally can’t choose just one from the many remarkable elements here.
First, let me talk about the symbolisms. The author obviously used a lot of symbols in this story! I feel like even the settings and characters are actually symbols. However, I only fancy to talk about three: the man with no face, the mongoose, and the blank page.
The man with no face, I think, is all the oppressed citizens during the Trujillato era. The fact that they’re faceless only shows us that they will remain nameless, and that their stories will never be told. It’s kind of a sad and scary symbolism especially when it got to the part that Oscar thinks that the faceless man he saw was joining his beating down. Maybe that’s a representation of how other citizens started to concede to Trujillato’s rule and hurt others just to protect themselves.
Next, personally, I think the mongoose represents the anti-fukú of the de Leons because it always shows up in times of need. But then I thought, hey that’s not a symbol! And so, I started to think it actually represents them, the de Leons. Somehow. I just don’t know how. Well, we know that like the de Leons, mongooses are foreign and not native. That’s one similarity already and I’m pretty sure there are a lot more! So yes I will firmly stand on my belief that the mongoose represents Oscar’s family.
The most interesting symbolism that I encountered, though, is the blank page. The first time I saw it, I felt confused because I just can’t understand what it’s supposed to mean. I dismissed the thought but then it appeared again so I decided to really think about it and I ended up with just one explanation: it was a blank page because it is up to the readers how they would think of it. And I think that’s pure genius!
Next up: the themes. I picked up many themes but I chose to focus on the following: politics, supernatural beings, feminism,
I decided to tackle three elements of fiction from the story because I personally can’t choose just one from the many remarkable elements here.
First, let me talk about the symbolisms. The author obviously used a lot of symbols in this story! I feel like even the settings and characters are actually symbols. However, I only fancy to talk about three: the man with no face, the mongoose, and the blank page.
The man with no face, I think, is all the oppressed citizens during the Trujillato era. The fact that they’re faceless only shows us that they will remain nameless, and that their stories will never be told. It’s kind of a sad and scary symbolism especially when it got to the part that Oscar thinks that the faceless man he saw was joining his beating down. Maybe that’s a representation of how other citizens started to concede to Trujillato’s rule and hurt others just to protect themselves.
Next, personally, I think the mongoose represents the anti-fukú of the de Leons because it always shows up in times of need. But then I thought, hey that’s not a symbol! And so, I started to think it actually represents them, the de Leons. Somehow. I just don’t know how. Well, we know that like the de Leons, mongooses are foreign and not native. That’s one similarity already and I’m pretty sure there are a lot more! So yes I will firmly stand on my belief that the mongoose represents Oscar’s family.
The most interesting symbolism that I encountered, though, is the blank page. The first time I saw it, I felt confused because I just can’t understand what it’s supposed to mean. I dismissed the thought but then it appeared again so I decided to really think about it and I ended up with just one explanation: it was a blank page because it is up to the readers how they would think of it. And I think that’s pure genius!
Next up: the themes. I picked up many themes but I chose to focus on the following: politics, supernatural beings, feminism,