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Speculative Fiction

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao can be used as an example of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is a sub-category of fiction that deals with ideas that are not directly real, but rather imaginative or futuristic. The plot of this novel skips from past to present and focuses on different characters’ stories at various times in order to convey the long-lasting impression that Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 left. In order to emphasize the brutality of the past, the novel blends aspects of sci-fi and fantasy with horror as well as popular culture. By combining all of these elements, Diaz creates a work of speculative fiction that holds various social critiques.

Using Rafael Trujillo as a minor character

The novel uses history to set the scene and create its social and political commentary. The basis of all of the problems that arise in this novel is the US-sponsored dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo that lasted for over thirty years. Junot Diaz surely includes Trujillo as a character in the story, but limits his representation to descriptions that come from Yunior’s perspective. Because of this, Trujillo has an important role in the story, but is ultimately weakened due to the given perspective. Diaz creates irony using this strong dictator as a minor character and focusing on the characters that would have otherwise been marginalized. This arrangement destabilizes established power hierarchies, putting more emphasis on the seemingly least powerful characters and taking power away from the most prominent and infamous characters.

Furthermore, when Trujillo is referenced by Yunior in his narration, the descriptions are entirely negative. Yunior’s references show little respect and are meant to belittle Trujillo’s presence in the story. By actively disparaging the brutal dictator, Diaz breaks social and cultural norms about how common people function in a power hierarchy. Yunior is given the power to represent Trujillo which lessens Trujillos dominance in the power scale, allowing the novel to have a strong stance against the dictatorship, stripping Trujillo of the meaning behind his title. Overall, making Trujillo the minor character allows Trujillo to be seen as more of a joke than a strong leader while also enforcing the seriousness and long-lasting effects of his power.

Lola’s daughter

Throughout the novel, Diaz uses metaphors and symbols to present Dominican history as well as the fuku curse. Lola is Oscar’s older sister, and her daughter serves as a symbol of the potential to break the fuku curse. Lola’s daughter is a character that holds the future for the De Leon family and symbolically the entire Dominican culture. She symbolizes the Dominican identity struggle of growing up with two cultural ties, that of the Dominican Republic and that of the United States. Although in the story her character does not know her own role, she must accept and embrace her Dominican culture to break the curse. This sense of uncertainty towards this fantastical curse allows the novel to speculate as to how it can be broken. The curse itself is meant to be a defining factor of Dominican culture. Diaz ties in Lola’s daughters character with breaking the curse to show that the future of Dominican culture is to be defined by aspects others that a history of oppression and colonization. The idea that an individual has the power the change the effects of the curse in their own life is a way for the novel to show that Dominican culture can be changed in a way that marginalized people can have power.

Yunior as the narrator
Although Yunior is the narrator of the story, and everything that is said comes from his perspective, the story revolves around the unlikely hero, Oscar. Oscar is a shy, overweight teenager who loves to read and write science fiction and fantasy and is searching for love. He is constantly deemed not masculine enough by those around him, and he does not follow the norms of his Dominican culture. He too is affected by the fuku curse that stems from a long history of oppression, and the only way for him to break free is to acknowledge his own culture while also adapting to his new surroundings in the United States. Oscar’s character’s love for science fiction allows Diaz to intertwine metaphors from the science fiction realm such as that of “Watchmen”. This reference allows Diaz to propose the question of whether or not it is just to ‘save humanity’ by killing a human and make parallels to Oscar’s decision running away with Ybon as well as the future of Dominican culture and history. By referencing “nothing ever ends” on page 331 in the novel, Diaz proposes that the past cannot be changed, but must ultimately be accepted in order to create a better future and reclaim the culture.

Oscar’s story is not the only one that Yunior tells. Yunior covers multiple generations of the De Leon family history in order to emphasize the transgenerational struggles and the inheritance of the fuku curse. Because of the way that the story is narrated, the readers get a comprehensive view of the cultural factors that surround Oscar that ultimately lead to his tragic death. Diaz shows that the mistakes made in Oscar’s family lead to Oscar’s fate, providing a cautionary tale for the future of Dominican culture in a fantastical context. Furthermore, Yunior recounts the stories and history of a family that is not his own. He is invested with the telling of their story, but is simultaneously reserved. He even admits that as the one telling the story, he holds a certain amount of power. By reconstructing the De Leon family story, and not letting the characters speak for themselves, Yunior subconsciously follows the ‘Trujillan model of narration’, suppressing their own stories for his own mental gain whether it be a recreated connection to Lola, his ex-girlfriend or Oscar, his friend.

Even when talking about Oscar, Yunior does not focus on the fact that he is nerdy and does not hide it, but rather makes illusions to science fiction and fantasy works that Oscar would be familiar with. Yunior also shows that he and Oscar were not so different after all, but the difference was in the fact that Oscar was not able to hide the fact that he was an outcast while Yunior was able to fit in while keeping his unique qualities and interests to himself.