26 pages • 52 minutes read
Junot DíazWildwood
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Lola
Twelve-year-old Lola is a normal girl on the brink of the natural maturation of adolescence. “Wildwood” is her coming-of-age story. Lola is tall for her age with straight hair, dark skin, and a figure that is already getting attention. She tells her younger self early on through second-person narration, “A behind that the boys haven’t been able to stop talking about since fifth grade […] You have only the slightest hint of breasts” (Paragraph 4). Lola is an avid reader and longs for places far away, or at least not New Jersey. Lola is tired of being the immigrant Dominican girl constantly under her mother’s thumb without the nurturing she is desperate for. She has recurring strong feelings about what lies ahead for her, described as “Bright lights [that] zoom through you like photon torpedoes, like comets” (Paragraph 7). These premonitions of an eminent change signal something significant in her life is about to happen.
Lola has more a significant number of chores in the house because her father abandoned the family, and her mother works outside the home, sometimes more than one job. Still, Lola manages the house and performs well in school. By the time she is 13, Lola endures a significant amount of trauma, most of which is inflicted by her mother. What she learns about what a mother could be and what her mother is are vastly different: “On TV and in books mothers talk to daughters, about life, about themselves, but on Main Street in Paterson mothers say not a word unless it’s to hurt you” (Paragraph 11). Lola’s life is largely defined by her relationship with her mother—in a literal way due to their violent dynamic, but also in a figurative way, as her mother’s past struggles impact many of her actions and thus Lola’s life.
Lola’s journey comes full circle at the story’s end when she is back in the Dominican Republic living with her grandmother. She finds stability in life, no longer the punk chick fighting her sick mother and everything else that reminds her of who she is and where she comes from. She begins to learn the truth about her mother’s journey, and this enables her to complete a coming-of-age narrative wherein she can understand the depths of intergenerational trauma that have quietly guided her path in life.
Belicia
Lola’s mother is a Dominican beauty. Tall with dark skin and silky hair, Belicia’s beauty is rivaled only by her rage. As a girl, she was sent from her home in the Dominican Republic by her family for protection “to keep her from being murdered. To keep [her family] from being murdered” (Paragraph 57). She was beaten, burned alive, and left for dead in her past relationship with a certain man. She makes her life in an immigrant community in Paterson, New Jersey. She has two children and marries, but the man abandons the family. Belicia is once again left isolated because of a man she loves and must make a life for herself and her children alone. The trauma is overwhelming and affects her relationship with Lola. Belicia is both the antagonist and an accomplice in Lola’s journey.
The lines of protection, tough love, and culture are tangled, and Belicia appears to think she is doing all the right things. When she is diagnosed with breast cancer, things deteriorate further, and life with her and for her becomes unbearable. Her cancer is an insulting last straw, and it aggravates all the trauma in Belicia’s life. This collides with Lola’s teenage angst and fantastical premonitions that something is about to change. When Lola runs away to live with her white boyfriend and his father, it triggers something in Belicia, who eventually sends her daughter back to Santo Domingo to live with her mother. Later, Lola learns the depth of her mother’s love: “Just know that I would die for you, she told me the last time we talked. And before I could say anything she hung up” (Paragraph 48). This indicates that Lola’s perception of her mother was limited and—unsurprisingly, given Lola’s age—immature. Rather than being a flat antagonist without love for her daughter, Belicia is instead cast as a complex character whose desire to care for Lola is hindered by the impact of her extreme lifelong trauma. Lola, in a way, reminds Belicia of her younger self, her mistakes, and the ways she suffered.
Oscar
Lola’s younger brother is a gentle soul who gets lost in books he reads and dreams up creative projects and aspirations. “That summer my brother announced that he was going to dedicate his life to designing role-playing games” (Paragraph 25). He has brown skin, and he’s overweight because of his stress eating. After Lola runs away, she returns to try and take Oscar with her, resulting in an exchange about his body: “Oscar, I said, laughing. You’re so fat! I know, he said, ashamed. I was worried about you” (Paragraph 41). Though Oscar doesn’t resemble Belicia as much, and so doesn’t earn her ire to the same degree, the abusive household he lives in still impacts his relationship with his body like it does Lola’s.
Oscar cowers under the strength of the women around him. When things become contentious and violent, he retreats to a corner, his room, or books. He doesn’t feel an urge to engage with his mother’s anger and abuse like his sister, instead simply trying to avoid it. Lola recalls, “We jumped on each other and the table fell and the sancocho spilled all over the floor and Oscar just stood in the corner bellowing, Stop it, stop it, stop it!” (Paragraph 27). Despite his fear, Oscar is taken care of by the female figures in his life, thanks to cultural traditions. “Wildwood” is a chapter in a novel that is otherwise about Oscar’s life, a brief departure from his story. Choosing to represent the perspective of his sister here helps allude to the differences in how intergenerational trauma affects different genders, and it explores how the intersection between sexism and racism is experienced by women of color.
His is a largely background character in “Wildwood,” although he rises to pivotal points in the story. When their mother changes the locks, it is Oscar who lets Lola in the house late at night. When Lola is planning her next attempt at running away, she needs Oscar to pull it off. His fear of Belicia, and likely his concern for his sister, leads him to tell their mother. Upon meeting at the appointed location, the two embrace, and it becomes clear that he alerted Belicia. “Lola, I’m sorry. It’s O.K., I said, and that’s when I looked up and saw my mother and my tia Rubelka and my tio Rudolfo boiling out of the kitchen. Oscar! I screamed, but it was too late. My mother already had me in her hands” (Paragraph 43). While this is a betrayal of Lola’s trust, it results in her being sent to Santo Domingo, where she can find stability and learn more about her mother’s past.
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By Junot Díaz
