The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a book in which a perfect mixture of American and Caribbean cultures is created through a common ground which is imagination and supernatural. “However, Juniot Díaz’s novel does not totally distance itself from any of the influences of Dominican tradition, Western fantasy, or Western realism and its Caribbean and Latin American adaptations. Instead, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao offers a uniquely Dominican-American fantasy perspective that enables Dominicans to recover in the diaspora a sense of how to relate to their history, even as that history remains tantalizingly out of reach.” (Landzendörfer, “The Marvelous History of the Dominican Republic in Junior Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”). Oscar, although quite far from the traditional, preconceived, and commonly accepted model of the heroic figure in our modern society, still fits the qualities and the abilities of a true hero. Indeed, despite the loser, nerdy, sorry side of his personality, his ethical and moral values reach a certain level in hierarchy which only a few other characters are able to attain and demonstrate, La Inca and Abelard definitely being among them. Also, the character of Oscar, unlike most of the characters in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, experiences I think a decent, if not good, end, which is also an essential criteria that mostly describes a hero: a real hero would never lose, even if death had to be somehow experienced. On the other hand, La Inca and Abelard, although having proved some sort of heroism in the book, can not really be considered as heroes for the same reasons as Oscar should be considered one: they don’t possess all the qualities required in order to fulfill the claim of being a true hero. They each represent two different parts of the main plot in their respective episodes, and the demonstration and proof of it is the one the primary goals of this essay.
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar is a complete nerd. This is just a fact. He’s fat, extremely clumsy with music and dance, hates sport, and has a passion for comic books as well as sci-fi movies and fantasy novels. As the only close but controversial friend he’s ever had throughout the story, Yunior, says: “Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn't have passed for Normal if he'd wanted to”( page 21). The worst in all this is that it’s a vicious cycle: Oscar tries to escape his issues with sci-fi and fantasy, which makes him even less attractive, which makes other kids tease him even more, and so on. Moreover, he experiences a real identity crisis due to the fact that he is not able to fit somewhere between the white kids who don’t accept him because of his skin color, and the Dominican kids who cannot imagine any reason for Oscar’s nerdiness. This inability to fit in a certain culture is a subject that is greatly talked about throughout the book. Finally, Oscar does extremely poorly with girls. Not that he lacks envy and will, but again, his personality and his look make everybody reluctant. But, despite all of that, it is fair to say that Oscar is the hero of the book, shall he be the most unlikely one. And that is because he has essential qualities of a hero which are high ethics, outsiderness, and a nice end. Indeed, other than the fact that he reads a lot and is an excellent writer as well, he demonstrates that he has moral values in the book with his respectful attitude and behavior with women, strongly in contrast with a lot of other male characters in the book who put down women, beat them, and use them for the only purpose of sex. Oscar is light years away from being like that, and this mostly because of his nerdiness. Who ever said that being a nerd wasn’t fine? Another thing that clearly shows that Oscar is the legitimate hero of the book is that he kills the villain. Yes, he does! Which villain? The whole spiritual, esoteric, insane idea of fukú. Even though he gets killed in the end, he puts an end to the fukú in the family because he dies happy, when until this point, every single character was dying of disgusting death, and mostly either unhappy or full of remorse. Indeed, Oscar has found true love. He experienced real sex, and felt how it is to love and to be intensely loved by a woman.
La Inca, Oscar’s “grandmother”, in the story is more of a mentor to the hero. In essence, a mentor is a character from who the hero seeks help, and eventually leads the hero to his final task, which may be a fight, or anything else that represent an effort to the hero. A common mentor is the character of Rafiki, the old baboon in Lion’s King who admonishes Simba to go back to his homeland and to seize the throne he deserves. La Inca is a mentor in the way that she he is very helpful to not only Oscar, but to Lola, and their mother before them, which by the way represents a contrast in terms of beliefs, to La Inca. “While the older generation represented by Oscar’s grandmother, La Inca, still holds to traditions of religion and noble propriety associated with the formerly illustrious history of their family, for example, the next generation, represented by Oscar’s mother, Beli, a girl who is dispossessed of her rightful inheritance by Trujillo’s persecution, is already more significantly influenced by Latin-American popular culture.” (Daniel Bautista, “Comic Book Realism: Form and Genre in Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”.) Indeed, La Inca’s advices are always to be taken into consideration. She has that experience that only grandmothers have, plus she’s not violent at all in in her admonishments, even when she is very angry. Additionally, she has some type of supernatural, magic powers. Her prayers are extremely powerful. She, by the way, may be given credits for saving Oscar’s mom life when she was young with her prayers.
Abelard, Oscar’s grandfather, Beli’s legitimate father, cannot also be described as a true hero for the single reason that he is the one who attracted Trujillo’s fukú on the family, even though not on purpose. The fukú will eventually leave a big impact because he and his wife will die horribly, as well as his daughters, except for Beli, who will survive. It is fair to say that the character of Abelard is contrasting with Oscar. Indeed, Abelard attracted the fukú, tried to fight it, but ended up suffering from it. Now, Oscar relentlessly fought the fukú and ended up dying but found love and happiness in the process, whereas his grandfather had died with plenty of remorse, leaving behind his wife and his daughters. Oscar is kind of the redeemer of the Cabral’s family. When deeply thinking about it, he’s very close to the character of Jesus in Christianity who had to die for all sins.
In conclusion, Oscar is obviously not, when first identified, the hero that everybody waits on, associate with, and that kids want to be like. Nevertheless, do not let his nerdy habits, his awkwardness with women, and his physical traits and shape fool you: he is an actual hero because of what he has inside his head and inside his heart. La Inca and Abelard also have good ethics and intellect but they are not fit for the role of hero. La Inca because she is too old, her time has passed, and all she can do is giving advices and pray. Abelard because he is the principal attracter of Trujillo’s fukú to the family, and had a very sad end of life.