The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Research Paper Example

a The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao The novel starts with the narrator's depiction of the curse, d fuku americanus—meaning a curse of doom, explicitly that of the Current World. The curse was brought over to Antilles islands when the Europeans arrived, and has stayed there ever since. The narrator puts the claim that the Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, late dictator, has a close linking with fuku. The narrator notifies the readers that he will be narrating a story of Oscar Leon, who was a victim of fuku of his family. The only known way of counteracting a fuku is using the term “zafa” to fend off the curse (Greiner 3). The narrator therefore wonders if writing this novel is his own way of saying zafa. Every body seems to be cursed! The first chapter, which happens in 1974 to1987 in Paterson, details Oscar’s childhood and early adolescence. For one week when he is seven, Oscar dates two girls, Olga and Maritza, at the same period. However, the threesome momentarily falls apart and the life of Oscar goes downhill from then onwards. In adolescence, he was fat, dorky, and unattractive. His interest in Genre creates him even more unattractive, and his only true friends are Miggs and Al. Oscar’s sister Lola try to encourage him to lose weight to be more masculine for him to land a girlfriend, but Oscar does not regard their advice. When Miggs and Al find girlfriends and purposely dessert him out, Oscar realizes that they even contemplate that he is a failure. Oscar goes to Santo Domingo to visit Nena Inca, and starts writing science fiction as a channel. When Oscar returns he finds a girl called Ana Obregon at SAT prep class, instantly falling in love with her. Oscar and Ana become good friends, but never physically intimately attached. Eventually Ana’s boyfriend named Manny returns from an army mission and Ana stops having time with Oscar. Afterward, Oscar goes to Rutgers for college. He hopes life in college may be different, but in there, he realizes that still he is a loser. Oscar, the character who collects the novel together, justly perceives himself as a doubly marginalized figure. A Dominican-American boy growing up in Paterson during the 80s, he is hampered by counter-stereotypical nerdiness in addition to problems of racism and social class. Bashful, precocious, and overweight, Oscar is well versed in Marvel comics and "Japanimation" lore. His ambition is to write a space fictional. A Dominican accent manipulates "Wilde" into "Wao" wile in college. Yunior (Solis 49), his college roommate and best friend, does not quite apprehend Oscar, however loves him and sees that there something is within Oscar that needs to be known. As the key narrator of the story, Yunior provides a loving portrayal of a tortured person within a tortured family. Redemption of Oscar “brief wondrous life” manifests at a momentous, but justified, price. Told from the viewpoint of Oscar’s sister Lola with his best friend Yunior, the story of the search for revitalization leads the reader through some of the darkest junctions of a country under severe dictatorial control. Lola pursues her own redemption, far away from her family, particularly her mother and her heritage. She only loves her younger brother Oscar and seeks protecting him from the curse which is tragically affecting their family. Saying that Hapatia Belicia was born to hard era would be an understatement. Beli’s mother died when she was only two months old, never met her father, held by her sisters a few times before they disappeared too, and spent no time in Casa Hatuey. Beli had multiple things sailing against her from the beginning of her pathetic life. She was born sick and underweight, at a time and environment where it would be difficult for any newborn to survive with her accompanied situation. She was also dark skinned, a reason that made her father’s family to absolutely dislike anything to do with her. At this juncture, her life is saved uniquely by a single woman’s actions, (Zoila), who breastfed Beli and apprehended her for long periods (Greiner13). Beli started to making turnaround in her health situation and it seemed like circumstances were turning around to her, but as expected by this point, but things do not smooth up for her. At this point, her mother’s relatives, Socorro, come and snatch her away from caring and nurturing Zoila. Her new family has no care for her; they take her only because they anticipate to be monetarily recompensed by the relatives of the father of Beli. They have no affection for the poor child and are completely driven by greed. When they recognize that they will never receive anything for taking care of her, they take her to even more aloof relatives. A lengthy time of her life begin where she gets no love from her caretakers, at a time when love is most vital, at the early development stage (Greiner 7). Her experiences during the subsequent few years adversely affect and significantly influence her resolutions for the remaining part her life. When the present relatives that hold her, give her away, the story gets bewildering. She is given again to even much distant relatives, and after being taken care for barely one month, the mother vanishes, and upon returning, comes back without Beli. She tells everyone that the girl died, but most probably, she sold her to a different family (Diaz 253). Beli lives with her now new family for about nine years. They do not treat her with love at all and she does not experience the caring and love that child should while growing up. This treatment affects her forever, as could be ordinary of a child at her position and age. The life of Beli changed in 1955 at least for the better, by a cousin of her father named La Inca, who stayed for long mourning after her husband’s death. When the whole distress with the family separation after the death of mother Beli, La Inca was too much in sorrow to be concerned with her cousin’s children welfare and was under the impress that the other part of the family would deal with it easily. She only discovered the actuality about Beli after her (Beli) sisters had already died under mysterious causes. La Inca was overwhelmed by terrible guilt about betraying her cousin by not caring Beli, mostly, since her cousin, Beli’s father, always treated her nicely and approved her marriage even when all of the family condemned it. It is here that Beli later meets, “the Gangster”, alias Trujillo’s right hand man, unknown to Beli and married to the sister to Trulillo. The Gangster spoils Beli, buying her expensive things, taking her to fancy restaurants. Despite cautions from La Inca to end this behavior, the impetuous, and almost foolish, Beli pays no attention, and ultimately becomes pregnant with the the Gangster. When the Gangster’s wife finds out, she cruelly sends her hooligans to kill her together with the foetus. She is left beaten badly ending up miscarrying the child in her. La Inca, afraid that the hooligans will come back, has Beli recuperate and later sends her to New York for safety. On the flight over, Beli meets the man who she later marries, and as the marriage lasts only for a short time, they have two children together, Oscar and Lola. Lola is a headstrong girl, just as her mother, and from nearly the beginning, this gets them apart, as one attempts to regulate the other, with neither of them backing down, only for poor Oscar to be in mixed up in it all. Everything turns around for them after Beli is diagnosed with cancer when Lola is twelve. Her breast is amputated later that year. As for Beli, coming from Dominican Republic, where sexuality stands as law, and a controlling disposition to boot, her mutilation after the surgery, and loss of control that comes along with cancer, is a momentous time. She tries making up for it, by monitoring her children even more than before, and molding Lola to an image of her past self. Lola agitates even more. She turns out to be “Punk Chick.” (Diaz 54). Lola even at one point shaves her head. When Beli gets her wigs, because she contemplates that Lola looks absurd, they even stir a fight over the issue. Lola follows her mother’s footsteps running away from home, making it as far as Wildwood, the New Jersey shore. She moves in with her new boyfriend and then recognizes that living with him with his dad is not great as he dislikes him almost she hates Beli, her mother. Keeping in touch with Oscar, since she cares for him and defends him greatly, she is found by her mother after Oscar cannot keep her the secret of her location due to Beli’s persistence influence over him. There they have another fight in and Beli gets as far as faking an injury, where in a flash of compassion to assist her mother, Beli gets the hand over Lola (Levander and Levine 176). Beli, in her elderly life, after she gets out of control and the horrible condition that she group up within, starts to missing the control, and wants it in her being. She becomes the controlling factor in lives of her children, and her oldest child Lola rebels against it, just as Beli rebelled against her father’s cousin, La Inca. As Beli begins slowly to loosing her battle against cancer, plus her control over her own self, she attempts controling more and more issues in her life, her children running away. Eventually , just like her mother, Beli, witnesses two of her own three children killed, though she out lives them, which is worse in a way. Beli ends up dying alone, as Lola moves to Florida, finally getting out of Beli’s life completely (Wiseman 67). The, belittlement of Lola, the death of Oscar, and the setbacks all three endure indicate to the datum that there is no escaping way from what is coming in their lives. It is easy for audience to predict what may happen to Oscar on the “Final Voyage”, but according to him it was an authentic attempt to fix the wrecked life he had made. It could or could not have been fuku, but what is assured is that neither Oscar nor Lola nor Beli had the capability to run away from their pathetic life they lived. Works Cited Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Faber & Faber, 2008. Greiner, Daniel. Forms and effects of violence in "The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao". New York: GRIN Verlag, 2012. Levander, Caroline F. and Robert S. Levine. A Companion to American Literary Studies. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Solis, Caitlin D. Oscar Wao and Literary Blackness: Decoding the GhettoNerd. London: BiblioBazaar, 2012. Wiseman, Katherine. Post-dictatorial Narrative Strategies in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Constructing and Collapsing Masculinity, History, and Narrative Authority. Harmpshire: Davidson College, 2009. Read More