Oscar Who?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao provides an account of Dominican-American experience, as well as life in the Dominican Republic under the reign of Trujillo. Contrary to the title, the namesake of the novel Oscar de Leon's life, seems anything but wondrous. An extremely overweight, outlandishly nerdy, socially awkward male, Oscar struggles with his identity as a Dominican-American (womanizing and sweet-talking) and eventually breaks the stereotype altogether.

Oscar is deeply implanted in his interests. His obsession with science fiction as well as fantasy leads to him to becoming a dreaming idealist, living out his ideal situations within his mind. For example after starting to work at Don Bosco high school he becomes attracted to his coworker Nataly and where "he had these images of walking into her apartment and ordering her to undress and cook grits for him naked" (Diaz 265).

Throughout the novel Oscar suffers from deep depression. He is almost always bombarded by insults from all of his peers, for being fat, for being an author, for being obsessed with space operas, and deals with massive mental pressure. This leads to a drunken suicide attempt during his college years in which "he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder" (Diaz 191).  However through all this torment and depression, Oscar doesn't have a redemption story, where he loses all his weight and learns to talk to girls. But instead he continues to be his own individual self defying what is considered the "norm", and eventually finding love ironically in the Dominican republic.

In this way Oscar is a soldier in a war of culture. In a society where certain attributes are forced and expected of you, Oscar a hopeless romantic found love in his own individual way.