Essay 2-The Brief WOndrous Life of Oscar Wao PDF

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Let’s take another way to our school, a black cat just crossed our path. As an eight year old stubborn kid, I insisted on taking the usual path while my cousin took the trouble of crossing a rivulet and walking an hour longer. During our school assembly, he warned me that I better watch out for the ...

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The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao ENGL 110

Superstition? Let’s take another way to our school, a black cat just crossed our path. As an eight year old stubborn kid, I insisted on taking the usual path while my cousin took the trouble of crossing a rivulet and walking an hour longer. During our school assembly, he warned me that I better watch out for the bad luck I have summoned upon myself. I remember being punished twice that day, tore my pants while playing soccer and stepped on dog poop. It didn’t take me much to believe that superstitious beliefs can actually bring you bad luck. Well, growing up, I eventually gave up believing in superstitions. Yet, taking another path when crossed by a cat and crossing my fingers when I’m nervous has been my instincts, ever since. Belonging from a very superstitious society of Nepal, I have learned that after being encountered by an event tied to a widely accepted superstitious belief, we tend to expect bad things to happen, which blinds us from seeing the good things that happen. Also, our human need to fill in the gaps for the things that we cannot explain is what persuades us to resort to superstition. It’s human nature. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz also deals with mysterious and superstitious forces such as zafa and fuku. It tends to manifest the idea that both tangible and intangible things are handed over from generation to generations. While forces like fuku and zafa are shown as magical powers in the novel, they have more profound meanings and are the symbolic representation of good and bad forces that coexist within us. The idea of zafa and fuku is highlighted from the very beginning of the novel. Fuku is believed to be a curse brought up in the New World by the Europeans when colonizing the world

whereas zafa is believed to be its counterspell. The horrific stories of fuku and dreadful suffering caused by it has terrorized the people of Dominican Republic. It is believed that fuku can plague one’s entire line of family. In Trujillo’s reign, it was believed that anyone who went against Trujillo or even thought of going against him was severely affected by the wrath of ‘fuku’. However, it is not clear how Trujillo had gained control over fuku as the narrator says, “ no one knows whether Trujillo was the Curse’s servant or its master(3)”. The dominican family of Oscar Wao was plagued by fuku when Abelard, Oscar’s grandfather, invited fuku in his bloodline by hiding his daughter from Trujillo. As a result, the entire Dominican family of Oscar Wao is plagued by ‘fuku’, making every member of the bloodline’s life a living hell. The major characters of this novel have had frequent encounters with a faceless man, who might be the physical representation of ‘fuku’. Beli, Oscar’s mother, had two encounters with the faceless man throughout the novel. First while she was returning from Bali after a vacation with the Gangster, she claimed that a man sitting in a rocking chair in front of one of the hovels had no face and he waved at her (135)”. The faceless man appeared before Beli was about to face a severe misfortune. Shortly after that, when she was in a car being beaten by two cops; she claims seeing a third cop sitting in the car who turned toward her and had no face(141). Oscar also shares a similar fate as his mother. When Oscar was driven to the canefields away from Ybon (Oscar’s love) , he saw the faceless man sitting in his rocking chair for the first time (290). It is not a coincidence that he also saw the faceless man, as Beli described, right before a near-death experience which would soon follow. Later, Oscar had a feeling that there was a third man, a faceless man, who joined the other two guys who were beating him up (299). In short, the faceless man first appears right before a member of Cabral family is about to face some severe misfortune, and he reappears when they are facing a near death experience.

The fact that the faceless man appears right before Beli and Oscar are about to face some severe tragedy could mean that it first appears as an omen which signifies the fuku (with which their family was cursed) is in effect. The near death experience followed by this incident is a consequence of fuku. During Trujillo’s reign, a huge number of people disappeared from the face of DR’s history without any trace. The faceless man could be the shadow of those victims whose submission to Trujillo’s injustice erased them from the history. Since, to comply with injustice is to give strength and courage to the ones who commit it, more people become victims of injustice as an indirect effect. As a deceased victim, the faceless man is also a reminder of what happens if we comply with injustice , and he is also a creator of more faceless persons like him. Also, the faceless man is a symbol for submission to injustice and cowardice. As the faceless man is just a physical representation of fuku, fuku is the symbol of consequences and bad luck induced by our submission to injustice and cowardice to fight back. The golden mongoose is the physical representation of ‘zafa’ in the novel. Diaz’s view on mongoose mentioned in the footnotes,”the Mongoose has proven to be an enemy of kingly chariots, chains, and hierarchies. Believed to be an ally of man” depicts that the mongoose is an enemy of chains, anarchism, and in this case: Trujillo. Also, its golden appearance catalyzes the fact that the mongoose is a physical representation of good: zafa. The golden mongoose first appears in the novel when Beli is about to die after being severely wounded while La Inca is praying for her well being. Meanwhile, the golden mongoose appears at her side and tells her to wake up and get out of the canefield, and thus saving her life. Although, it is tempting to view La Inca’s prayers to be fully creditable for the appearance of the mongoose, it was also because of Beli’s resistance and revolt against the injustice she suffered. The golden mongoose is a physical representation of the good luck earned due to the courage that Cabral family showed against

injustice done to them and their resiliency to not let their family’s name disappear from the history of DR. During her time with Beli, La Inca frequently reminded Beli of her family’s glorious past and also that she shouldn’t forget her family origins. By saying that, La Inca planted a seed of zafa in Beli which later took a physical form of the golden mongoose. As the curse of fuku coursed down from generation to generations, so was zafa along with it. When Oscar made a suicide attempt later in the story, the golden mongoose appeared in Oscar’s imagination preventing him from losing his life (190). The golden mongoose reappeared when Oscar was severely injured in the canefields after he was severely injured, indirectly saving his life again. In brief, we can concur that the golden mongoose is the zafa itself and symbolizes the courage and resilience against injustice and one’s powerful mentality of not letting his/her family’s identity disappear from the history. As the saying goes, “Luck only favors the brave”, zafa is the symbol of good luck earned by the Cabral family because of their willpower to go against Trujillo, a symbol of injustice in this novel. The story of zafa and fuku doesn’t end with Oscar’s death. After Oscar’s death, Yunior starts having a recurring dream where Oscar appears as a faceless man holding a book with blank pages (325). This could be an indication by Oscar that fuku still continued to live in the bloodline of Cabral family and the blank book he held in Yunior’s dream could mean that he was pleading Yunior to preserve his family’s name from disappearing from the face of history. The cycle of fuku and zafa is never to end, now taking on another generation of Oscar’s family line, Olga’s daughter. Although a work of fiction, Diaz’s representation of superstitious elements, fuku and zafa, have very profound meanings; fuku is the bad luck induced by submission to injustice and cowardice whereas zafa is the good luck earned because of the courage to face injustice.

However, some incidents remain unexplained in the novel and can only be theorized. Like, when Oscar was driven to the canefields, he saw his dead family in a bus whose driver was the mongoose and the faceless man was the conductor(321). It could mean that fuku and zafa are like ying and yang; opposite and contrary but interconnected forces working together. In addition to that, the dead family members of the Cabral bloodline might represent the idea that fuku and zafa both are within us, and who we choose to be our driving force in the journey of our life depends on us. Although these ideas can be accounted for, the novel still has a lot of gaps to be filled with by interpretation of the reader himself. So, the real question is : Would you revert to superstition to fill in the gaps or view these mysterious elements only as a symbolic representation of good and bad forces that coexist within us?...