Oscar, Abelard, and the Fuku Friend Zone

Last class, Dr. Hanrahan broached, to twenty something uncomprehending expressions, the idea that Oscar and his grandfather Abelard are linked. We discussed the importance of their writing, their nerdy interests, their more chivalrous attitudes towards women (for Dominican men). We agreed that what obscured this resemblance was Oscar’s lack of luck with the ladies-- his permanent state of awkwardness in basic social situations, his utter lack of the nobility Abelard had before the fall. I think I see in these parallel studies of non-conforming masculinity another one that we haven’t discussed which relates very well to the concept of “the friend zone,” which maps very well onto modern geek culture and Dominican political history if you can conceive of the friend zone as an individual state of demoralization arising from an inbalance of power within a relationship.
 If we sub in Abelard’s “relationship” with Trujillo for Oscar’s relationship with Ana, we see how the two react to these situations similarly. The two cannot make assertive decisions. Abelard hesitates until it is too late to send his daughter away to safety for fear of what Trujillo may do if he notices. “He saw his daughter being brutally raped by Trujillo while he himself was lowered slowly into a pool full of sharks.” Their conditions don’t appear to be linked out of compassion, but out of a kind of patriarchal self-interest. “I should get to decide what goes on in my household!” 
 Likewise, Oscar refrains from telling Ana how he feels until her boyfriend returns. And then when she arrives at his house with bruises and tells him that she loves the man who gave them to her, Oscar spends pages musing about the various ways in which the experience is unfair to him. “It wasn’t just that he thought Ana was his last fucking chance for happiness ... It was also that he’s never ever in all his miserable eighteen years of life experienced anything like he’s felt when he was around that girl” (47).
The fall is the immediate aftermath of these experiences. And in light of these connections, could it be that Fuku has less to do with a lack of luck, or with the inherent darkness of the world, than with the De Leons’ inability to be courageous in the face of that darkness? It’s a fact that people in the friend zone don’t make particularly good friends to the people who “put them there.” On both sides there is the expectation that the connection is simply a means to an end.