“For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person, but that’s not really what happened” (pg 137)

In “The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao”  by Junot Diaz the character of Oscar is shown under a different light. High school is supposed to be a life-changing experience for people, it’s a place where people get a chance to emerge and it’s a transition from teenager to young adult. For Oscar, high school wasn’t what it was supposed to be, Oscar felt out of place and never really fit in anywhere. As a nerdy Dominican boy in an all Catholic High-School, he had a different view of High-School then his peers. Oscar felt as if everyone there acted like zombies and that everyone was the same. He could see that there was a clear mob mentality, everyone wanted to be cool and fit in but Oscar just enjoyed doing the things he liked like reading comic books. While everyone was trying to fit into the social norms Oscar realized that the most important thing was being an individual.

Junot Diaz realizes that many people feel like a social outcast in high school and don’t really know how to fit in and that some even feel like they’re wrong for not trying to fit in. By  portraying Oscar as a nerd who is comfortable under his own skin he is sending a message to the youth that everyone is unique. The lesson of being a leader instead of a follower is also very important and plays a pivotal role in the portrayal of Oscar. He is able to point out the mob mentality of many of his peers and uses it in order to embrace his individualism.

He stared at the mud for a moment, then faced me. “You know how long you were gone?” “A few minutes. Not long.” “A few seconds. There were no more than ten or fifteen seconds between the time you went and the time you called my name.” “Oh, no …” I shook my head slowly. “All that couldn’t have happened in just seconds.”

At this point in the novel, we don’t know much about the narrator except for the fact that she has a relationship with Kevin. Immediately before this part of the book, Edena , the narrator, just saved Rufus who was not breathing.  Edena goes home to Kevin after saving Rufus’ life and is covered in mud. Kevin is confused by this because Edena was just screaming for Kevin to help her. He asks Edena how if she knew how long she was away and she said that she believed she was gone from a few minutes and at that moment it was clear to Kevin that there was something creepy going on.

This happening so early in the story sets a precedent for the rest of the story. It lets the reader know that this story will involve weird and magical twist throughout. It also relates back to the beginning of the novel when Edena didn’t have any idea what was going on and she was at a loss for words when questioned about what had happened to her arm. Already through the first 50 pages of the story there is the consistent theme of confusion and mystical powers.

This line shows the innocence of Miranda. Ferdinand had been doing work for Prospero and Miranda offered to do some of the work in order to help him. In response Ferdinand said that he would never allow Miranda to have to do work. Miranda goes onto to tell Ferdinand that she had never seen another woman before and that the only male she had ever seen before meeting Ferdinand was her father. This is like when the Native Americans first saw the white Europeans because both times they were introduced to something/someone that they had never seen before. Miranda goes on to say how she never knew what to except when seeing another human but now that she had met Ferdinand she would be content with spending the rest of her life in his company. This can be seen as naive by Miranda because she hadn’t known Ferdinand for very long but she was already willing to say that she wanted to be with him. The line has a direct correlation with the main idea of the play because there is a constant theme of Miranda’s lack of knowledge of things outside of the island or innocence. This is similar to when she is told by Prospero that she is a princess. Prospero has to remind her of this because she has no knowledge of the outside world. The innocence of Miranda is similar to that of the Native Americans when the colonist first came because they had no idea what to expect, the only thing that the Native Americans knew before these interactions was what they had in their tribes and in Miranda’s case she had only known her father and Caliban who wasn’t even a human.