When you first start reading about Oscar you begin to feel almost an upbeat detailed description on how he progressed through his life. When the story continues you seem to get another story about a depressed child who suffers from obesity and is obsessed sci-fi genres. These combinations of issues lead Oscar to a stereotypical pattern in his life where he battled his self-conscious as well as girls. The author allowed me to be drawn into the book interested if Oscar would somehow stumble across a miracle and solve the problems in his, but like reality things are not always that simple and although a drastic change is made the outcome of loneliness continued in what is debatably the right direction.
This is where the author threw me for loop as I thought it was just a story about this single boy’s depressing life; Junot Diaz was able to build an environment in the second chapter through the eyes of the daughter Lola that put everything in perspective. All of a sudden the story became less about menial everyday issues and more about a family’s struggle in a society that I could not grasp from my own experience.
Diaz puts you in a much darker place from Lola’s perspective, as I continued to read I grew more and more depressed only to be intrigued on what is going to happen in the next chapter when Lola almost seems to find some solace. Lola as a “typical”, according to the novel, Dominican daughter does takes care of everything around the house and raises her brother Oscar as her mom works two to three jobs. It does not stop there as her mom is very abusive and continually demoralizes Lola physically and mentally, as this wear and tear continues on someone there is always a breaking point and when Lola hits hers all hell breaks loose. She shaves her head, stops going to school, and eventually runs away from home to live with Aldo and his war shaken father which turns out to be an impulsive and terrible decision. Oh and did I mention during this entire process her mom has breast cancer and is clearly going through kimo therapy and surgeries while trying to work two jobs.
Even if you walked a hundred miles in someone’s shoes it can never satisfy their perspective or conscious of movement. Even in the same household Oscar and Lola had two completely different stories which is insane to wrap your head around when you think of your brother or sister and to how much different their story is from yours. But to get back what was discussed in the beginning of the story with fuku and relating it to story Diaz is telling you start seeing patterns. Oscar cannot get a girl or lose weight always coming up a little short, the mother has breast cancer no husband and is working two jobs, Lola in her own right is rebellious against her mother “lost”, as well as their other relatives who have lost spouses and other tragedies throughout the book.
As I think about this is this a result of fuku not letting them find happiness, or is it the environment in which they were born to fail and their society holding them back from individual progress.
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