I liked our discussion about beginnings and themes of family in Oscar Wao. I feel that one of the most prevalent themes in this novel is something that Lola said: "The only way out is in" (141). In this novel, the way to get past things in your life is to understand your heritage. I found this sentence to be one of the most important things the novel had to say. Overall, i'm not a huge fan of the novel, but i do like the themes of family and finding oneself.
In this novel, there are no perfect characters, which i think makes the novel realistic. It portrays what anyone's family is like. The reader does, however, get to look at what makes each character imperfect, something that most people don't get from their own family. This gives the reader a huge advantage to what most people know about their own families.
I think that it's interesting that Yunior is the one compiling all of this information, not Oscar. This shows that the De Leon family is going to continue to fall unless someone in that family can read what Yunior has written and understand completely everyone's past to help avoid future downfalls. I think that this novel is trying to get every reader to understand what their family has gone through in order to escape any fuku of their own.
I wonder if the book's closing chapters confirm what you are saying here, Kyla.
ReplyDeleteFor Oscar, at least, I think it meant more than just understanding the family's history. The only way out of his miserable, pointless life was to dive headlong into the chance for happiness that he'd come across, mortal danger be damned.
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