The Brief Wondrous Life

Diaspora has created new realities for those who have suffered in a country being run by a dictator by incorporating their daily pain and suffering into a new life surrounded by difficulty. Diaz and Danticat have taken this struggle that they have faced personally, and created complex characters who struggle with creating a life out of horror. In both The Dew Breaker and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the main characters have all experienced traumatic events and have managed to find a way to express the pain and grief that they now suffer from. In Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, the novel is broken up into short stories, each with a new main character. Most are immigrants who suffered at the hands of the dictator who was running the country,
Beatrice is another example of these characters. She had lived the first part of her life in Haiti and, because she was a faithful lover, suffered the consequences at the hands of an entitled man. Through this event, she has lost her ability to truly love another man and found herself taking part in a ritual of enhancing another’s experience with love. By recreating herself into a bridal seamstress, she has found sanctity within the human emotion she finds herself unable to experience personally. Each of the girls who come to her for dresses can expect the best as she throws herself into her work, and considers each of these girls her own. However, Beatrice has no family or children of her own and seemingly has no plan to follow that path. Being punished for her love and faithfulness created a distrust and a hatred so deep in her, she has chosen to relinquish a certain type of life and the possibility of creating new life for sanity. Her choice to not bring new life into the world is likely due to her not wanting to suffer or force more suffering on another again, but continuously encourages the love she has forsaken by creating beautiful gowns for the brides to wear. The name Beatrice itself means “she who brings happiness” (Nameberry), and she has been created in this image. Intricately weaving beautiful bridal
In recovering from their traumas, the characters have found themselves engaged in rituals meant to heal and propel themselves forward into a better portion of their life. Oscar has found love, Nadine creates an alter to lost love and family, Beatrice sews intricate wedding gowns for love she’ll never have, and Ka sculpts her father as a hero, not the villain she later discovers he had been. Happiness is a relative term, and not a life long emotion everyone is able to achieve, let alone those who are escaping their own traumas, but rituals have been ways of moving beyond. Sometimes in moving past trauma, choices regarding life and death must be considered. The responses to pain and trauma in these novels has been overwhelmingly linked to active choices in ending the pain permanently, rebuilding the pain as something else entirely, or transferring the pain to another. Life is not permanent, but the choices Oscar, Nadine, and Ka’s father have made are when considering death. Those such as Beatrice, Ka, or Yunior, who continue their life with trauma, make semi-permanent choices to live. Building healing out of rituals is a beautiful way to continue a life worth living, or find a way to make peace with the pain that cannot be lost, and these characters have all found ways to heal, through life or