The Cabral Family In Junot Diaz's The Brief

Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. While often spouted in the face of failed romance, this is exactly the type of advice than can kill the members of the Cabral family. Junot Diaz's nove, The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao, follows the lives of the members of the Cabral family, dating from the youngest and titular character,
Oscar, to his long-dead aristrocratic grandfather, Alebard. The story is set in the wake of the family's fall from grace in the Dominican Republic, and the subsequent migration to New Jersey. While the free living members of teh family: Oscar;
Lola; and Beli, seem quite different at first, the reality is that all three members of the Cabrals share something in common. They are at heart, romantics, obsessed with love and all it …show more content…
"Not that his "girlfriends" fared much better. It seemed that whatever bad no-love kama hit Oscar hit them too." (17). It is implied within the passages, that the shallow nature in which the three break up initiates a Dominican curse, or fuku, which haunts the three for the rest of their lives. Though Oscar is not the only victim, he is nonetheless responsible for invoking the negative karma by cruelly breaking up with the more homely of his girlfriends in favour of the shallow beauty of the other, and causing the former to break into a mess of tears before latter breaks up with Osar shortly afterwards. Befitting that a shallow love brings them petty suffering for the rest of their lives. Still, the seeds of Oscar's erratic loves are yet to bear their blackest fruit. The second great pain that Oscar endures as a result of love is his near suicide. After finally gaining a real relationship with a girl after long, lonely years of failure, Oscar is driven to the edge of despair when he discovers she is cheating on him, and nearly ends his life in a drunket bout of depression. "If he'd landed on Route I8, as planned,