Oscar Wao Tragedy Essay

Brian Nguyen
Mrs. Lisa Pak Cuevas
CP English 12 GHI (2)
11 April 2014
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Tragedy Almost inevitably we always find ourselves entangled with misfortune or facing a series of unfortunate events. Accommodated with these events we’re often reminded of the doings of “karma”. In our current culture, “karma” represents a cause-and-effect relationship in which we may do something considered “bad” or “evil” and nature itself takes its course in punishing us for our actions. Karma is sometimes referred to in a positive sense but most often it is referred to negatively. In “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, written by Junot Diaz, the “fuku”, described as a curse, appears to be extremely similar to karma. The story focuses on main character Oscar Wao who lives a miserable life, cursed by the fuku. The fuku is often recognized and acknowledged in many Latin American countries. The story of Oscar Wao represents a tragedy of his acquaintances and himself cursed by the fuku of the Latin American culture. During Trujillo’s reign, the fuku was seen as a mysterious power that Trujillo magically had to haunt the Latin American people, making their lives tragic. The narrator, later revealed as Yunior, strongly believed in the fuku as he describes, “It’s perfectly fine if you don’t believe in these “superstitions.” In fact, it’s better than fine-it’s perfect. Because no matter what you believe, fuku believes in you.”(5). Just like karma, the fuku will at one point or another haunt you for something you did. The main character Oscar never really did anything wrong and seemed to have lived as a normal citizen but even so, the fuku still haunted him because of past things that his family had done before to bring about the curse. Oscar wanted to live life like any typical Dominican Republican male but he couldn’t because he was cursed. He at multiple times in the story continuously and with effort attempted to build a relation with a girl and gain sexual experience but was never able to reach that point until barely before he dies. Overall, it’s extremely tragic how he never really had a great life and even when he got what he had wanted his entire life, the fuku ended up killing Oscar. One of the characters named Belicia also lives a tragic life as the fuku curses her. Beli too was once a normal young girl living in the Dominican Republic until her life flipped around when she began wanting to attract boys, having sexual intercourse, and getting into trouble. Eventually Beli finds herself at the extent of dating Trujillo’s sister’s husband and everything begins to go downhill for her. She ends up becoming pregnant and some of Trujillo’s policemen find Beli and “….beat her like she was a slave. Like she was a dog.” (147). All for simply dating the wrong person, mingling with the wrong people, Beli’s life became miserable as the fuku haunted her. She was physically beaten a couple of times and she condemned by the entire

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