Brief Wondrous Life

Where The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao begins with an excerpt from a poem by Derek Walcott, it ends on the lines spoke by Oscar, “So this is what everybody’s always talking about! Diablo! If only I’d known. The beauty! The beauty!” (355). After all of the struggle and pain the novel contains, it closes on an affirming note that beauty can be found, even in the most disheartening circumstances. Over the course of the novel, the characters undergo a great deal of pain, often as the result of their conflicting ideologies. Often times, the characters within the novel struggle to find themselves within a world that necessitates categorization. Throughout the novel, readers experience the pain that the members of the Leon-Cabral family endure
in attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage along with their native identity. Belicia symbolizes the role of direct immigrant, while her children, Lola and Oscar, represent the second-generations immigrants. However, despite the similarities that their diasporic journeys may enclose, each of their experiences exist as entirely unique. They are neither the “nation” from which they were born or “nothing” within the nation the dwell. They are, instead, a combination of their respective past and present experiences.