Narration
Instead of Díaz directly telling the story to the reader, he creates an aesthetic distance by speaking through the novel's narrator Yunior. Yunior provides analysis and commentary for the events he is relaying in the novel. His speech often exemplifies code switching, switching rapidly from a lively, Caribbean-inflected vernacular, replete with frequent usage of profanity to wordy, eloquent, and academic prose. This runs in parallel to several central themes of the novel regarding identity, as Yunior's code switching alludes to a struggle between his Dominican identity and his identity as a writer. Code switching between Spanish and English is also central to the narrative itself of the book, as characters switch back and forth as they see fit.
The narration of the book also shifts away from Yunior to another character at several key moments in the story. In chapter two, Lola narrates her own story from the first person. This is foreshadowing of the intimacy between Lola and Yunior yet to come. The beginning of chapter two also features the use of second person narration, rarely used in literature.
Díaz's use of Yunior as the main narrator of the book strengthens the idea of the novel as metafiction. Yunior reminds the reader consistently that he is telling the story, as opposed to the story happening in its own right.
Footnotes
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes extensive use of footnotes to the point that many of the characters are developed in the footnotes in addition to the story. Rather than just provide factual background, Yunior's narrative continues in the footnotes just as it does in the body of the novel. When describing Oscar's deep love of science fiction and fantasy literature, Yunior continues in the footnotes: "Where this outsized love of genre jumped off from no one quite seems to know. It might have been a consequence being Antillean (who more sci-fi than us?) ..."[7] The presence of Yunior's footnotes, therefore, remind the reader that there is always more to one's story.
Yunior even makes reference in the footnotes to his present life earlier in the novel than when he describes it in Chapter Eight. "In my first draft, Samaná was actually Jarabacoa, but then my girl Leonie, resident expert in all things Domo, pointed out that there are no beaches in Jarabacoa."[8] Yunior thus builds the writing of the novel and his relationship with Oscar into the greater history of the Dominican Republic. The many science fiction references throughout the novel and footnotes emphasize (Yunior believes) the fantastical elements of Dominican history. Yunior cites the fall of Mordor and the dispelling of evil from Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings as a complement to the fall of Trujillo.[9]
The footnotes contain many references specifically to the reign of Rafael Trujillo from 1930 to 1961, providing historical background on figures like the Mirabal Sisters,[10] who were assassinated by Trujillo, and Anacaona, an indigenous woman who fought against the invading Spanish colonialists.[11] While referencing historical figures, Yunior frequently includes the novel's fictional characters in the historical events.
"But what was even more ironic was that Abelard had a reputation for being able to keep his head down during the worst of the regime's madness—for unseeing, as it were. In 1937, for example, while the Friends of the Dominican Republic were perejiling Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans and Haitian-looking Dominicans to death, while genocide was, in fact, in the making, Abelard kept his head, eyes, and nose safely tucked into his books (let his wife take care of hiding his servants, didn't ask her nothing about it) and when survivors staggered into his surgery with unspeakable machete wounds, he fixed them up as best he could without making any comments as to the ghastliness of their wounds."[12]
Yunior thus builds a context for the Dominican history, where the characters are used just as much in the footnotes as they are in the body of the novel.
Many of the footnotes ultimately connect back to themes of coming to a new world (underscored through the novel's references to fantasy and sci-fi) or having one's own world completely changed. Trujillo's reign as revealed in the footnotes of the novel becomes just as dystopian as one of Oscar's favorite science fiction novels.
Slang
Díaz moves between several styles in the novel as the narrative shifts to each of the characters. Oscar's speech reflects an autodidactic language based on his knowledge of fantasy, 'nerd' literature and his speech is filled with phrases such as "I think she's orchidaceous"[13] and "I do not move so precipitously",[13] whereas Yunior "affects a bilingual b-boy flow"[14] and intersperses it with literary language. The story of the De Léon family is told and collected by the fictional narrator Yunior and the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani has described the voice of the book as "a streetwise brand of Spanglish".[14] He often gives his own commentary and analysis on the events he is relating in the story and sometimes reveals failings in his own life, both as a narrator and a person: "Players: never never never fuck with a bitch named Awilda. Because when she awildas out on your ass you'll know pain for real."[15]
His informal and frequent use of neologisms can be seen in sentences such as a description of Trujillo as "the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated"[16] or his description of the effectiveness of Trujillo's secret police force: "you could say a bad thing about El Jefe at eight-forty in the morning and before the clock struck ten you'd be in the Cuarenta having a cattleprod shoved up your ass."[17]
Oscar Wao also oscillates between English and Spanish. Yunior peppers the English-speaking novel with Spanish vocabulary and phrases and certain English sentences are built with Spanish syntax: "Beli might have been a puta major in the cosmology of her neighbors but a cuero she was not."[18]
Oscar lives his life surrounded by the culture of fantasy and as Oscar describes them, "the more speculative genres",[19] and the language of these cultures is strewn throughout the book along with Spanish. Brief phrases relating to games like Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop role-playing game terms are used as common colloquialisms: "He [Oscar] could have refused, could have made a saving throw against Torture, but instead he went with the flow."[20]
Magical realism
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao contains several of the hallmarks of Latin American Magical Realism. The novel's plot is intricately bound up with the notion of Fukú Americanus, which is "generally a curse of doom of some kind; specifically, the Curse or Doom of the New World".[21] The reliance on Fukú, and its counterpart Zafa gives the novel a fantastical element which show magical realisms part in the plot, as the narrative follows the impact of the supernatural curse.[22] This is coupled with other supernatural elements such as the man with no face and the mongoose.
The fantastical elements of the novel take place in both New Jersey and in the Dominican Republic. This combination establishes a real world setting for these events which blends the natural with the supernatural, another attribute of Magical Realism.[23]
In addition of the fantastical elements of the novel, Oscar Wao also includes a degree of political critique, in the discussion of the Trujillo dictatorship of the Dominican Republic, as well as a portrayal of metafiction, in Oscar's own writing on fantasy novels. Both political critique and metafiction are typical features of Magical Realism.[24][25]
Díaz also hints at the novels Magical Realist elements by claiming that Fúku was popular in places like Macondo,[26] which is the fictional setting for One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is seen as one of the most prominent Latin American Magical Realist novels.
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 to convey the long-lasting impression that Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 left.[27] To emphasize the brutality of the past, the novel blends aspects of sci-fi and fantasy with horror as well as popular culture.[27] By combining all of these elements, Diaz creates a work of speculative fiction that holds various social critiques.
Using 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 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.[28] 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.[28] 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.[29]
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.[29] 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.[29] 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.[29]
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.[30] 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.[29] By referencing "nothing ever ends" on page 331 in the novel, Diaz proposes that the past cannot be changed, but must ultimately be accepted to create a better future and reclaim the culture.[29]
Oscar's story is not the only one that Yunior tells. Yunior covers multiple generations of the De Leon family history to emphasize the transgenerational struggles and the inheritance of the fuku curse.[31] 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.[31] 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.[32] 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.[32]
Even when talking about Oscar, Yunior does not focus on the fact that he is nerdy and does not hide it, but rather makes allusions to science fiction and fantasy works that Oscar would be familiar with.[33] 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.[33]
