April 12, 2012
English 253: Hispanic American Literature
John Christie
The Curse of Fukú Many individuals encounter different love experiences during their entire lives. In the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, we see Oscar de León, a Dominican American young man, who resides in Paterson, New Jersey with his family going through many different relationship experiences in his life. One of those experiences is during his childhood; he is an outcast and is considered a nerd. Another love experience that Oscar encounters is when he goes to Rutgers University to get his education. One more experience that Oscar has is when he travels back to his native country the Dominican Republic and falls in love with the woman that he least expected to fall in love with. During his early childhood years, Oscar is quite the ladies man; he has two different girls at once: Maritza Chacón and Olga Polanco. However, after dumping Olga and choosing Maritza, she turns around and dumps him. From that point on Oscar’s luck with the ladies comes to an end and he finds himself struggling to get into another relationship throughout his life. As Oscar grows up in to a teenager, he becomes overweight and is considered a nerd. Instead of being a jock that has ladies following him everywhere, he is obsessed with science fiction, fantasy novels, and with falling in love again. In high school Oscar “walked into school every day like the fat lonely nerdy kid” (Díaz 19). Like many kids who aren’t popular in school, Oscar is a loner and has no friends. Regardless Oscar finds a way to attend high school everyday even thought he doesn’t feel comfortable with his own self. As the years went on Oscar finds himself in his senior year in high school and is still trying to find a girlfriend. After a couple of his nerdy friends Al and Miggs managed to find girlfriends, Oscar decides that it is time for him to find one too. That’s when he starts to get close to Ana