Summary: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz uses Oscar’s relationships with Ana and Ybon as symbols throughout The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, representing pieces of Oscar’s character that he is forced to let go of, simultaneously leading to the degradation of his innocence and romanticism.

Ana Obregón, Oscar’s first love of the novel, showcases his hyper involvement with women who want nothing to do with him. In spite of her on again, off again relationship a man twice her age, Oscar continually deludes himself into believing that she might choose him over Manny. While his feelings grew, without “even realizing it he’d fallen into one of those Let’s-Be-Friends vortexes...plenty of misery guaranteed and what you got out of it besides bitterness and heartbreak nobody

knows” (Díaz 41).

Sweet, innocent Oscar gets in his own way, and is forced to acknowledge his place as Ana’s companion, not lover. This is Oscar’s first moment of understanding that no matter how intensely he felt about someone, seldom would he have those feelings returned. This realization cuts Oscar’s patience, and in a bout of fury, he steals his tío’s gun and waits outside Manny’s house, seeking vengeance for his abuse of Ana. “He didn’t care that he would more than likely be put away forever, or that niggers like him got ass and mouth raped in jail...He didn’t care about nada that night” (Díaz 47). This reckless abandon of his customary logic is the first time Oscar’s genius fails to prevent him from endangering himself or others. Manny never came, Oscar never killed him, and Ana never even knew. Although anticlimactic, this episode shows that despite all his supposed

smarts, Oscar’s heart is always in control. Throughout the novel, Oscar develops a pattern of creating these intense, imaginary fantasies about women, who eventually break his heart and send him into a depressive spiral, often resulting in some sort of suicidal behavior.
Ybón is Oscar’s undoing.

His unending love being blocked by her inaccessibility shreds the last bit of his retained faith and leads him to his demise. Through Oscar’s rose-tinted glasses, he fails to see Ybón as anything other than his one true love, and the beginning of his ‘real life.’ Following her around town, leaving letters and voicemails detailing his deep affections that while she claims to reciprocate, she cannot because of her boyfriend, the police captain. Ignoring her pleas and warnings for him to let her go for his own safety, Oscar “meeting Ybón physically marks Oscar, in part because of the beatings he receives for courting her, but also because he decides to diet and lost ‘all the weight’(Díaz 312)” (Sáez). Not Lola, not Yunior, not even Oscar himself could get him to shape up and put himself together. After meeting Ybón, Oscar immediately starts putting in the work to look good for her, showing just how much he believed that she truly was his last chance at happiness. This continued until the police tracked Oscar down and kill him. Beyond a simple shooting, Oscar’s death showcases that he truly believed that Ybón was his last true chance for love, as if he believed he had another chance with someone else, he would have fought (in signature Wao style) to love another day. Yet, even in the words of Dr Manhattan, “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends” (Díaz 331). Oscar’s death went beyond himself: pushing Lola to pull herself together and get

married, his mother lost both her will and her battle with cancer, and set Yunior on his own path to realizing that maybe, just maybe, Oscar Wao actually had things figured out. Learning that before his death, Oscar actually had sex with Ybón hammers home his loss of innocence — Oscar at the end was a far cry from the cute, chubby kid he used to be.
All in all, Oscar's emotional deterioration through the novel is marked by his relationships with the important women in his life. While ultimately, accomplishes his original goal and loses his virginity, that moment came at the price of his innocence and romanticism.