Wildwood

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Simile

Diaz uses similes liberally to provide vivid images and a greater understanding of the text. In describing Lola’s mother’s breasts, he writes, “[T]he aureoles are as big as saucers and black as pitch” (Paragraph 3). This entire paragraph is devoted to the enormity of Belicia’s breasts, which equate to power and strength for her. The size of her mother’s breasts embarrasses Lola, and she hopes she does not inherit that trait along with all the others from her mother. In this same scene when Lola is asked to feel her breast for a knot, she thinks that it’s “like a bread that never stopped rising” (Paragraph 6). The knot itself is “tight and secretive as a plot,” sparking an overwhelming feeling of “Bright lights zoom[ing] through [her] like photon torpedoes, like comets” (Paragraph 7). The combination of simile and hyperbole help solidify the impact of what is being said, creating more accurate descriptions and signifying the intensity of the narrator’s feelings in each scene. Months after Lola runs away, Belicia, her sister, and brother-in-law ambush her as she rendezvouses with her brother to get some clothes, books, and money. Belicia grabs Lola, “holding on to [her] like [she] was her last nickel” (Paragraph 43), but Belicia is left “bawling like a lost calf […] on the ground, bald as a baby” when Lola evades her (Paragraph 44). The desperation is heightened in this scene, a major turning point in the story, and the use of vivid descriptions through simile and metaphors contributes to the tone.

Point of View

“Wildwood” begins with a second-person narrator, which is rarely used by writers. Despite the main character being Lola, Diaz uses point of view to place the reader as a character in this all-important first scene. It’s the reader who is called into the bathroom, sees the enormous breasts, feels for the knot in the breast, sinking fingers into the flesh, and finds the hard mass. The reader is now personally invested in the story about to unfold. Here is where Diaz switches to a first-person narrator, and Lola takes over the story. “And it’s in that bathroom that it all begins. That you begin” (Paragraph 8). The story is told in first-person flashback until the point Lola is living with her grandmother in the Dominican Republic. Diaz then brings the story to the present tense. Ultimately, while also helping the reader connect with Lola from the beginning, this technique serves to create a nebulous sense of memory and time. Lola’s narration feels unreliable at times due to the way she is recalling things, and a poignancy is developed through the thoughtful and regretful ways she speaks to her younger self.

Foreshadowing

The hints that something is going to happen are not subtle. Lola’s feelings of impending change are a thread throughout the story. Her premonition in the bathroom when feeling the knot in her mother’s breast is forceful and visceral: “You become light-headed and you can feel a throbbing in your blood, a rhythm, a drum” (Paragraph 7). With her mother’s cancer diagnosis, Lola and her mother set off on parallel journeys—one to an end, the other to a beginning. The feeling happens again as Lola is walking home with her friend Karen and asks Karen to cut her hair. She remembers how “[a]s soon as I said it I knew. The feeling in my blood, the rattle, came over me again” (Paragraph 16). The haircut becomes a shearing, happening in front of the mirror in Karen’s bathroom as Lola puts the clippers in her friend’s hand and guides it until all her hair is gone. The heavy sense of foreboding in this scene foreshadows the violent reaction her mother would have to it later. After Lola is with her grandmother in Santo Domingo, she speaks with her mother on the phone, and Belicia tells her she would die for her. She begins feeling she will have another premonition. This is the catalyst for change, the new beginning that Lola feels is coming. In the days and weeks that follow, the feeling intensifies. On a night when her grandmother was going to tell her something about her mother, the feeling hits “with the force of a hurricane” (Paragraph 58). While her final premonition implies that she is coming of age and reaching a new level of maturity, it also foreshadows the difficult next step in her emotional journey to adulthood.