Use Of Magical Realism In The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Literature has always had a powerful role in society, especially in a multicultural environment. It can serve as a documentation of history, emotionally connect with readers with prevalent themes and topics that are being discussed in the world today, and can also serve as a way to help readers understand the political problems arising in another country. Authors use multiple techniques to convey their compelling message, especially to highlight political issues to offer answers and solutions to the reader. Junot Díaz’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, exactly does this. The novel uses magical realism to describe the Dominican Republic’s reigning dictator, Rafael Trujillo, who still has a lingering presence today despite being assassinated

in 1961. Díaz personifies the supernatural element of the fukú—influencing the character’s lives and ultimately their fate—to discuss the Trujillo regime as a supernatural effect on people to help the readers better access and understand the everlasting presence of Trujillo’s power.
The purpose of the fukú is to emphasize on the supernatural technique Díaz uses to foster the reader’s belief in the presence of Trujillo throughout the years and even today.

The novel’s first line opens with the concept of the fukú;

They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus… generally a curse or a doom of some kind. (Díaz

1)
The fukú is introduced as a curse brought from the New World—doming the lives of individuals, even a country, to death or bad fortune.

Unlike any curse though, the fukú is a real curse that affects everyone; “everybody [even] knew someone who’d been eaten by a fukú” (Díaz 2). The narrator of the novel, along with all the characters, are scared of the presence of the fukú, believing that the “fukú believes in” (Díaz 5) them. Coincidentally, the fukú arrived when Trujillo came into power, making it “clear he and it (fukú) had an understanding, that them two was tight” (Díaz 3). Most of the problems that the characters encounter with the spirit of fukú are related to Trujillo in some way. Trujillo never makes a physical presence in the novel, yet, his presence can be found everywhere—in the form of the fukú. It can be inferred that Trujillo is the main character of the novel because of his haunting presence in the novel—hovering over the main protagonists. Díaz even uses the death of Oscar— shot to death by the capitán of the police force and his goons—turn back to Trujillo. Oscar’s sister, Lola, believes the death of Oscar was because of Trujillo and the curse of the fukú, swearing “she would never return to that terrible country”, the Dominican Republic, believing “ten million Trujillos is all [they] are” (Díaz 324), knowing his presence will never go away. When her daughter is born, even though she is far away from the Dominican Republic and is shielded by “a string on her

neck: three azabaches… shield[ing] against the Eye [fukú]” (Díaz 329), she is still not safe because “the Circle will fail. As Circles always do. And for the first time she will hear the word fukú…Not now, but soon” (Díaz 330). Trujillo still has control over Oscar’s family and the generations beyond his, unless there is someone that can stop the “circle”. Trujillo will always haunt Dominican’s, thus making him the main character in other’s lives. Regardless of the curse of the fukú, he is the fukú in real life, which Díaz emphasizes to show his readers how Trujillo is still an issue today.
Beli, Oscar’s mother, is constantly affected by Trujillo’s presence, cursed by the fukú at birth. As a female character who grew up during the Trujillo regime, hearing about and experiencing tragedies while Trujillo is alive, she feels the fukú curse directly. When Beli is born, the fukú strikes her when her mother died and the rest of her family abandoned her— “she was so dark no one on Abelard’s side of the family would take her” (Díaz 80). She then lives a mundane life that is not destined for her. Beli is then introduced through the perspective of her rebellious daughter, Lola. She explains that her mother is sick with cancer, which is led back to fukú. Lola struggles with her mother’s cancer, however, she sees it as an opportunity to question her mother’s authority and escape from her control. When Lola becomes of age, she begins to feel a strange “scary, witchy” (Díaz 57) feeling, so she decides to rebel by turning into a “punk chick” (Díaz), and acts out against her mother. The strange feeling she feels at the age 12 is fukú beginning to plague her life, which then a serious of misfortunate events occur. Beli goes through a similar feeling once she hits puberty and is “transformed almost overnight into an underage stunner” (Díaz 91). Immediately, Beli’s life plummets right on after—she is plagued yet again by the fukú. It’s not until she becomes involved with the Gangster, who is married to Trujillo’s sister, the fukú curse affects her directly, leaving her with “five ribs, broken; left kidney, bruised; right lung, collapsed; front teeth, blown out” (Díaz 147) in the canefields in the middle of the night. The canefields become symbolic for the De Leon family: it is a symbol of violence and a place for Trujillo to inflict his curse—his fukú. The “Canefields are no fucking joke, and even the cleverest of adults can get mazed in their endlessness, only to reappear months later as a cameo of bones” (Díaz 149)—it is a place for Trujillo to unleash his dark power, symbolizing a mystic and unfortunate fate for anyone crossing him.
The fukú follows Oscar despite being born in Paterson, New Jersey, which betrays his love, his dreams, and eventually, ends his life. Yunior, Oscar’s friend, and roommate, first introduces the concept of the fukú to the readers—explaining that he has “a fukú story too… it just happens to be the one that’s got its fingers around [his] throat” (Díaz 6). Being closely associated with Oscar, fukú affects him also. Oscar is first described as “a “normal” Dominican boy raised in a “typical” Dominican family” (Díaz 11), however, one thing that makes Oscar stand out from other ‘normal’ boys, is his obsession and belief of the promise of science fiction and fantasy—his life revolving around fantasy narratives. Oscar “wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber… [He] couldn’t have passed for Normal if he’d wanted to” (Díaz 21). Yunior knows “Oscar would have [not] liked [the fukú] designation… He was a hardcore sci-fi and fantasy man, believed that that was the kind of story we were all living in” (Díaz 6). Oscar constantly uses the fantasy world to escape his problems presented in the real world, which have been cursed by fukú. The beginning of Oscar’s life is lightly affected by fukù, especially with his struggle to lose weight, find love, and losing his virginity, however, once he falls in love with Ybón, Oscar falls into the pattern of Beli’s misfortunate life—the fukú influences Beli and Oscar to go through similar experiences. In the last moments of his life, Oscar is “walked… into the cane” (Díaz 321) fields, and is shot to death in the place where the fukú festers. His last words are “fire” (Díaz 322), a term of violence in the place that symbolizes violent power from the men that are influenced by Trujillo.
At the end of the novel, Oscar is the only one that beats the fukú curse, despite being shot from the capitán who is directly related to Trujillo. He defeats the curse of the fukú by falling in love, being accepted by Ybón for who he is, and losing his virginity—the wants he desired from the beginning. Oscar becomes blessed by the zafa, a “hope that the bad luck will not have had time to cohere”, which is a powerful “counterspell” (Díaz 7) against the fukú. Oscar has multiple encounters with the mongoose (a zafa), which is “one of the great unstable particles of the Universe” (Díaz 149), a magical force that opposes Trujillo and fukú. The last time Oscar encounters the mongoose is when he is “one finger tap away from dead” (Díaz 300)—
the mongoose saves his life by singing to his family where his body is. However, when Oscar is lying on the ground, the mongoose demands him, “what will it be, muchacho” (Díaz 301), where Oscar realizes that he is the fate of his own story and in order to defeat fukú, he needs to be a zafa. Oscar also realizes that to be accepted by himself and Ybón, he has to show his ability to stand and take what he wants instead of running away from his problems. He risks his life for love in order to make a stand and fully be who he wants to be. Oscar transforms into the person he has always wanted to be in his final journey leading up to his death, and when he comes back and faces the goons one last time, he willingly sacrifices himself by explaining in detail his love story and “put[ing] his hand up” (Díaz 323), eventually shot to his death. It wasn’t until Ybón’s “love that he’d been able to do the thing that he had done” (Díaz 324)—to attempt to end the fukú curse. In the last pages of the novel, Oscar has the last words, which is suggested to be his last words ever written before death: “So this is what everybody’s always talking about! Diablo! If only I’d known. The beauty! The beauty!” (Díaz 335). Oscar affirms to his family that love and beauty can be found through life experiences, despite the fukú cursing their lives. By having Oscar say the last word in the novel and describing the last moments of his life before it ended, Díaz emphasizes on Oscar’s triumph over the oppression that is still presented today in the Dominican Republic. Oscar affirms to Lola the “little intimacies that he’d never in his whole life anticipated” (Díaz 334), happens to him, indicating that defeating fukú is not difficult if one stays true to themselves. Oscar also suggests to future generations that it is up to them to finish the fight against fukú and the Trujillo regime—they just have to remember “the beauty” (Díaz 335) of life.
Based on the characters in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the supernatural force of the fukú is always following them—the remnants from Trujillo. The purpose of this novel is to educate readers today about the terrible actions the Trujillo regime had on Dominican Republican’s when he was in power, and even still today despite no longer being in power.