The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Analysis

There are 15 blanks on 10 different pages throughout Junot Diaz’s bestseller The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Not all of these blanks are created equal. Some hold the place of things or names, as if to protect the reader, narrator, or noun it is holding the place of. Others seem almost randomly thrown in, and the reader is forced to wonder what is so important about whatever the narrator is referring to. Then there are a special few whose purpose is strikingly clear, and yet these are the most confusing of all. Overall, Diaz uses these blanks to make the reader think about history, culture, and some of the more mysterious things in life. Of the blanks throughout the novel, the ones that occur most frequently seem to serve a purpose

In doing so, they raise many, many questions, and their ability to do so makes them some of the most important words never spoken. The best example of this are the three blanks spoken to Oscar by the Mongoose. Just after Oscar receives the most brutal beat-down of his life, he is given a choice: more or less. “More, he croaked. ----- ----- -----, said the Mongoose, and then the wind swept him back into darkness” (Diaz 301). It is this short passage that fully takes advantage of the possibilities of the blanks. Does the narrator know what was said? If so, why is he refraining from informing the reader? What could the Mongoose have said? Did Diaz ever intend to write a proper Mongoose response? Perhaps the reader is meant to fill in the blanks himself. Perhaps the author could not figure out the right words to say and mystified the reader instead. Perhaps the blanks are no more than fillers representing a lack of information on behalf of the narrator. Interestingly, as a writer, Diaz is “interested in the gaps in stories, like the places where there isn’t a story”, so it may be that he is trying to instill in the reader the same sense of wonder he has for the lack of information (“Junot

“Before all hope died I used to have this stupid dream that shit could be saved, that we would be in bed together like the old times, with the fan on, the smoke from our weed drifting above us, and I’d finally try to say the words that could have saved us. -------- --------- ---------” (Diaz 327). While similar questions are raised here as they were before, these blanks also raise new insights. Since three blanks in a row are used in place of speech in only these two instances, it forces the reader to consider if and how they are related. Perhaps the two are not related, but it almost seems like too much of a coincidence. Whatever the reason, the reader is forced to stop and think about what he (or she) would fill the blanks with, and the blanks induce thought and discussion, just as they were meant