The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Yunior’s frequent use of fantasy and science fiction references are much more than a stylistic quirk. Fantasy and science fiction are the lenses through which he and Oscar view the oppression and injustice of the Trujillo regime. Trujillo is seen as Sauron, the primary antagonist of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, his lieutenants as Sauron’s ringwraiths, and La Inca as the ageless elf Galadriel who provides safe passage for the heroes. Yunior even believes that the real reason Abelard was imprisoned may be that he uncovered evidence that Trujillo’s evil was of a supernatural origin. Oscar, he writes, found it particularly appealing to think of Trujillo as “a supernatural, or perhaps alien, dictator who had installed himself on the first Island of the New World and then cut it off from everything else, who could send a curse to destroy his enemies” (245).

The question remains of why Yunior and Oscar construct these fantastical storytelling superstructures to explain political and personal trauma. One answer is that they grew up reading Spider-Man comics and Tolkien and watching Star Trek and Planet of the Apes. It’s little wonder, then, that their perception of the world is filtered through these operatic battles between cosmic good and cosmic evil, forces beyond most mortals’ control that Oscar is just one radioactive spider bite away from taming.