The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Summary

Published in 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is about an unconvincing protagonist named Oscar de León. Even though Oscar is supposedly the main character of the novel, Díaz made a very clear choice of giving other characters the spotlight to change how the book should be read by his audience. Rather than having a clear start to finish plot of Oscar Wao, Díaz chose to weave in the stories of other characters throughout the novel to give his audience a better picture and understanding of Oscar as a person. Oscar’s lack of presence may be daunting to some readers as they attempt to figure out his purpose within the book. The choice that Díaz makes when writing this novel, ultimately paints Oscar de León as the protagonist

It is not until later in the chapter that the audience is made aware that the narrator was Lola. This shift in voice is undoubtedly a choice made by Díaz to cause confusion amongst his audience. In doing so, Díaz makes the reader think about how Lola’s perspective could give insight on the true protagonist,

Oscar. As the chapter continues, the audience begins to see Lola’s own development as a child and how it deeply contrasted Oscar’s growth. She, unlike Oscar, is often under the critique of her own mother as she grew up. It was through her mother’s discipline where she learned to go under the guise of a perfect Dominican daughter, one who would be “the one cooking, cleaning doing the wash, buying groceries, writing letters to the bank to explain why a house payment was going to be late, translating” (Díaz 56). With all the attention that Belicia Cabral was giving to Lola, she never had the time to attend to Oscar and see what he was up to.

Another way Lola de León was different was that she is extremely rebellious. As she grew older, she became tired of putting up a façade that she was the perfect child and

She wasn’t una pendeja” (59). She had known that her mother was going to fight until her dying breath to maintain dominance over the relationship between the two. Yet, Lola would not give in because she knew that she could no longer just be the daughter of Belicia Cabral. It was important that she found her own voice.

This would be something that Oscar could never accomplish, as the reader discovers after reading the book.

Whenever the audience learns more about Lola, they are also indirectly learning about

Oscar. Díaz has masterfully created a dichotomy between the two characters as he represents one as almost an opposite of the other. While Lola is smart, responsible, hard-working, and more importantly rebellious, Oscar is lazy, unambitious, and an extremely timid person.

Although these character traits were highlighted in the first chapter of the novel, Díaz reinforces every single one of them by showing his audience the other end of the spectrum in

Lola. Even as it seems to draw the audience’s attention away from Oscar, he is still ever present in the words that are written.

In the following chapter, Díaz employs a similar method to give further