Oscar de Leon, a superhero's ending.

The final moments of Oscar’s life as revealed in “The Final Letter” of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao did not seem to agree with the rest of Oscar’s time on this planet. In this chapter, Yunior reveals that Oscar did manage to get away with Ybón and lose his virginity to her towards the end of his twenty-seven days in the Dominican Republic. This revelation seemed to me like a way to provide a happy ending to the story, and didn’t actually agree with the rest of Oscar’s misfortunes. Throughout the entire book, Oscar desperately struggles for any girl to give him the time of day; and although a few are nice to him, Oscar’s passionate, borderline-obsessive love is never reciprocated. Until is he meets Ybón. She initiates a conversation with Oscar and Oscar falls irrevocably in love with her for the rest of his life, even to the point of returning to the Dominican Republic after his great beat down, a trip which he probably knows will cost him his life. I thought that Oscar’s pestering of Ybón despite her protests was very in character – he never gives up fighting for a chance on love. However, as Oscar was unlucky in every aspect of his life, especially with women, it doesn’t seem in line with the rest of the story that right before he dies he ‘gets the girl’. This doesn’t seem fair to the Oscar’s characterization and all of his misfortunes. It seems like a way to add a happy or redemptive ending to a story that didn’t need one. This small detail, which was the greatest victory to Oscar, just did not seem to fit. I questioned whether Oscar may have been making this up or at least greatly inflating what actually occurred. But I do not think that Oscar was lying. He never bowed to the pressure of Dominican masculinity, lying about his sexual escapades or his luck (or lack thereof) with women. So I don’t think he would have lied about Ybón to Yunior just to give everyone something to remember him by; that would not have been Oscar. I also thought that perhaps this revelation was included to give Oscar the superhero’s ending that he had read and written about so many times. Although I was happy that Oscar was able to get the one thing he wanted most in life, finally ‘getting the girl’ in his last days is not in line with the rest of Oscar’s character. Oscar wasn’t a superhero, despite all of his hopes and dreams to be. He was just Oscar, which, in the end, was enough.