The Faceless Man

Throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a recurring "character" that makes numerous appearances is a faceless man, one who has no distinguishable characteristics.  Almost uniformly, this man appears whenever one of our main characters is in great strife, such as on page 141, when Beli is being apprehended by Soy Trujillo's thugs, about to be beaten to a pulp.  A question raised in class was, "What does the faceless man represent?"  A classmate raised the idea that the faceless man could represent what the Dominicans become whenever they are complicit in Trujillo's terror regime or stand idly by when they see injustice being committed around them- faceless, lacking all sense of a self-identity.  

This struck me as very astute, and when reading the final sections in Oscar Wao, the faceless man appears once again in what I believe is the most memorable of these appearances.  Oscar is being drug to the cane fields by "the Capitan"'s cronies, about to receive a pitiless beating, once again in the most dire of circumstances.  Oscar searches for help but "there was only a lone man sitting in his rocking chair out in front of his ruined house and for a moment Oscar could have sworn the dude had no face..." (298).  This is striking not only because it is again an appearance of the faceless man, but because this man is witnessing all of these horrific events transpire; yet he continues to sit in his rocking chair, not showing an ounce of empathy for Oscar's situation.  This man's home is situated right on the edge of these cane fields, home to so many of these same kinds of beatings.  Therefore he witnesses many of these beatings, to the point where they have become commonplace and unremarkable to him,  and sits idly through them all.  This is the very embodiment of the faceless man; he has become numb to the horror of the Trujillo regime, and out of his neglect he loses his identity as an empathetic person. 

This scene holds weight for a multitude of reasons- the brutal violence, the pleasure that these cronies take in their savage jobs, and for another appearance of the faceless man.  Before encountering this example, the reader could attribute the faceless man as symbolizing a number of different ideas, but this scene helps to crystallize exactly what is meant by this recurring symbol.  This scene also helps to illuminate the meaning behind the other instances of the faceless man; when looking back, the reader can see that all of these instances involve a situation in which a unidentified bystander witnesses the horrors around himself, yet continues on without intervening.