Summary Of The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

In Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz examines the struggles of the proverbial nerd in the basement in his continuous struggle for love. For Oscar, this is a losing battle. The combination of his obesity, his love for science fiction and fantasy that he is extremely overweight and is in love with everything science fiction and fantasy. The problem: Oscar is unable to, or chooses not to, hide his nerdiness. Thus, Oscar is in battle with himself as his nerdiness is a continuous obstruction to his love of women. Díaz foils Oscar with the cool kid on the block, Yunior, who rooms with Oscar to impress his sister. Yunior is the ultimate player, so while Oscar chases girl after girl, and receives rejection after rejection, Yunior

Oscar always turns to writing whenever he feels depressed, especially after being turned down by his latest crush. Oscar moves from his love of women to his love for writing. But, after being “dissed” by Jenni, Yunior had “Figured it would be like always” but Oscar “stopped writing—Oscar never stopped writing—loved writing the way I loved cheating” (186). The emission of the letter “I” before “Figured” shows how the narrator—Yunior—is removing himself from his own narration. Furthermore, the lack of full sentences such as “The thing that carried him” implies a less developed craft of writing (unlike Oscar’s writing). In addition, Yunior narrates in a decidedly Latino style: “Took me like a half dozen tries and two million vales.” The incorporation of “vales” shows the mixture of the two languages and cultures: American and Latino. Also, the short sentence structure, “but it wasn’t like always” shows that it is a monumental moment. Additionally, Díaz uses vernacular—“on the sly”—, vulgar language—“all fucked up”—, and “likes” to convey a less formal tone, which helps to connect with the reader. The use of time references, “a week of