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Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

1531 Words7 Pages

Words have power. They can cause laughter and they can cause tears, but at the end of the day words form a type of hope. No matter what happens words will always be there, will always be something to hold on to. When something happens that forces words to be lost and forces language to end, hope dies with their disappearance. In Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the mother of the titular character has a troubled backstory. In the late 1950’s in the Dominican Republic, Hypatia Belicia Cabral falls in love with a mysterious man known as the Gangster. Unbeknownst to Belicia, the Gangster has ties to Trujillo, the ruthless dictator of the Dominican. The Gangster is married to Trujillo’s sister, who is not happy with the …show more content…

Junot Diaz makes this clear in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, where the mother of the titular character endures a vicious beating by henchmen of the dictator of the Dominican Republic. In this beating, different examples of types of languages are given. La Inca prays intensely all night long, so much so that she rivals the power of God in pushing the devil away. Belicia stays defiantly quiet during her beating, doing what she can to protect her unborn child. Of course, no one can withstand a physical beating forever, so Belicia eventually falters, and soon teeters on the verge of death. Here is the end of language, when all hope is lost and silence descends on the canefield. It is not until a voice rings out that language returns and hope comes back with it: the voice of the mongoose. This is what saves Belicia. Throughout the novel, the idea of language and words vs physical attributes are brought up, specifically in regards to Oscar himself or the Fuku curse. Oscar is not at all physically inclined, but he is very skilled with writing and stringing together sophisticated words. The fuku can appear even at the mention of a name. In the cane field, it is prayer and silence vs fists and nightsticks. While the fists and nightsticks did a number on Belicia, she did survive. Diaz makes it clear that words have a unique power in the Dominican Republic, and despite all the physical-ness of Dominican culture, words have a place there

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