The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the tragic story of the young Oscar de Leon. As the author Junot Diaz puts it, “Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about---he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.”(Diaz 11). Poor Oscar was just a pawn in this play between good and evil, light and dark, the fuku and the zafa. Oscar’s entire identity was the product of his family’s curse, destined to live a short, tragic life with no way to escape it.
Darkness
One of the biggest external forces that is affecting Oscar’s life is the fuku. It is also sometimes called the de Leon curse The first time the Man is seen is when Beli (Oscar’s mom) is about …show more content…
This was the second biggest external force affecting Oscar. It’s what keep him going during his brief life. During what is described as the “the fall” or simply Oscar’s suicide attempt by jumping off a bridge he was visited by the mongoose. The narrator writes, “Later, when he would describe it, he would call it the Golden Mongoose, but even he knew that wasn’t what it was. It was very placid, very beautiful. Gold-limmed eyes that reached through you, not so much in judgment or reproach but for something far scarier. They stared at each other---it serene as a Buddhist, he in total disbelief---and then the whistle blew again and his eyes snapped open and it was gone.” (190). He would survive the fall and it can be inferred that the mongoose helped save his life. The zafa is the opposite of the fuku. A chant said to drive away the fuku, kind of like a prayer. Here in the story the mongoose is the zafa trying to help Oscar through is life. Another time the mongoose shows up to help guide someone is when Beli was just beaten by the two men. He comes to her aid saying, “You have to rise now or you’ll never have the son or daughter…You have to follow.” (149). The mongoose is the opposite of the faceless man who tries to help in times of great need and this is true for Oscar and
Darkness
One of the biggest external forces that is affecting Oscar’s life is the fuku. It is also sometimes called the de Leon curse The first time the Man is seen is when Beli (Oscar’s mom) is about …show more content…
This was the second biggest external force affecting Oscar. It’s what keep him going during his brief life. During what is described as the “the fall” or simply Oscar’s suicide attempt by jumping off a bridge he was visited by the mongoose. The narrator writes, “Later, when he would describe it, he would call it the Golden Mongoose, but even he knew that wasn’t what it was. It was very placid, very beautiful. Gold-limmed eyes that reached through you, not so much in judgment or reproach but for something far scarier. They stared at each other---it serene as a Buddhist, he in total disbelief---and then the whistle blew again and his eyes snapped open and it was gone.” (190). He would survive the fall and it can be inferred that the mongoose helped save his life. The zafa is the opposite of the fuku. A chant said to drive away the fuku, kind of like a prayer. Here in the story the mongoose is the zafa trying to help Oscar through is life. Another time the mongoose shows up to help guide someone is when Beli was just beaten by the two men. He comes to her aid saying, “You have to rise now or you’ll never have the son or daughter…You have to follow.” (149). The mongoose is the opposite of the faceless man who tries to help in times of great need and this is true for Oscar and