Blog Post Four

One of the most prominent features of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is its use of the supernatural and the fantastical and their relation to Dominican life. The story opens with the idea of the fuku, or curse. Fuku originally appeared to be a method of karmic justice, as its first victim was the admiral of the slave ships that carried Africans to the Dominican Republic. However, since the fuku was “carried in the screams of the enslaved,” it is more likely that this admiral was more like the “midwife” of the fuku rather than just its first victim. (Diaz 1) In this regard, the fuku is not karmic justice but an actual supernatural curse—one that would plague the Dominican Republic and its people for generations. One of the biggest signs associated with the fuku is Trujillo, as Yunior states “No one knows whether Trujillo was the curse’s servant or its master, its agent or its principal, but it was clear he and it had an understanding and them two was tight.” (Diaz 3) Trujillo is even later described to be something from another world—a man with so much power, influence, and information that he could know what all people on his island were doing all of the time is a scary enough thought many people started believing he had supernatural powers.  The Dominican people are highly superstitious by nature, indicated when Yunior proclaims “most of the people you speak to prefer the story with a supernatural twist.” (Diaz 243) Upon examination of the island and its history, it is pretty easy to see why the Dominicans are so superstitious—a history filled with so much poverty, death, corruption, and figures like Rafael Trujillo would be enough to make anyone believe their people are cursed. Trujillo himself can even be seen as a fuku—his reign was like a curse for most of his people, causing them to live in isolation and fear (the ones who lived through it, anyway.) While Oscar and his family are affected by their own fuku, believed to have been placed on them by Trujillo, fuku is presented as much larger than this in the story. It is not just a problem facing the Cabrals—it is a problem facing all Dominicans, as evidenced by the phrase “everyone knew someone who’d been eaten by a fuku.” (Diaz 2) The supernatural plays a huge role in the novel, as it is the main reason for conflict (Oscar’s fuku contributes to his unhappiness in life and to his death) as well as a major Dominican cultural phenomenon. Diaz uses the story of Oscar as a representation of the struggles his people have faced for centuries. Oscar, despite not being a typical Dominican male, gives the Dominicans and their problems a face and a voice. His wondrous life serves to show that the typical Dominican life is far from glamorous.