author of the brief wondrous life of oscar wao

The novel shows that loving someone also means inviting the possibility of losing them, but it also declares that the beauty of love is well worth the pain of loss. The more passionate displays of romantic love may receive more attention, but the quiet power of family and friendship helps the characters face hardship and tragedy. Likewise, Oscar and Beli call upon the strength of their love for their family when the loss of romantic love leaves them near death. Both Oscar and Lola offer Yunior a crucial alternative to romantic love, and the friendship between Oscar and Yunior proves to be the most important bond of the novel. Yet while these romantic relationships drive the plot, other types of love, such as friendship or family, form the foundation of the novel. As a response to these harmful sexual norms, Oscar’s relationship with a prostitute – the lowest of the low on the Dominican social spectrum – is shown to be the truest expression of love in the novel. Even worse, many Dominican men use romantic love as a way to exercise power or show status, as in Trujillo’s “culocracy,” the tendency towards domestic abuse, and Yunior’s casual use of women. Yunior expects love to be easy and to fix his insecurities, ignoring the real work and care that a healthy, intimate relationship requires on behalf of both himself and his partner.

Due to this, some characters look for love their entire lives without finding it. According to Yunior, Dominicans detrimentally confuse sexual love and true intimacy. Oscar’s definition of love and his methods of finding it are shaped by the cultural expectations surrounding love and sex in the Dominican environment of the novel. Like many coming-of-age novels, Oscar’s search for maturity takes the form of a search for romantic love, but the themes of love also go further than that in the novel. While the novel follows many threads in Oscar’s life, it is primarily concerned with love in all its varied forms.

Author of the brief wondrous life of oscar wao