Monday, September 30, 2013

First blog

 The novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz shows the life of a native Spanish speaking teenager. Although I enjoyed this book there were a few things that made me want to stop reading at certain points. Junot Diaz has a great way of expressing his characters backgrounds probably due to his personal life experiances. He brings characters into his writing with such emotion and power. One thing that I disliked about this novel was the code switching Diaz used in numerous chapters. Although it made the text more powerful and allowed the reader to see the characters true emotion, it made it more difficult for me to understand the text. I often had to re-read the text a few times to try and understand what Diaz was trying to come across in some of his writing. The mix of Spanish and English allowed me to see how Junior feels about certain things such as girls in most cases. Instead of saying something in English to the girl , he would be able to think to himself of something funny yet disrespectful of the girl which would allow him to feel better about himself when being rejected by someone he grew feelings for. The use of Spanish curses is often applied when the character is in a tough position and they express their emotions. Oscars mother code switches after becoming angry with Oscar. I enjoyed this novel but there could've been easier ways to express the characters emotion.