Oscar Wao as Lord of the Rings?

Despite Yunior’s claim that their world “ain’t no…Middle Earth” (194), I would argue that the connections between Oscar’s world and Tolkien’s Middle Earth run deeper than a mere attempt to show Oscar’s (and Yunior’s) interest in fantasy.

We’ve said that the phrase “The only way out is in”(209) refers to Yunior’s and Lola’s attempts to understand how fukú has functioned in the de Leon family by going back and tracing its origins and effects. But the phrase also reminds me of Frodo’s journey to destroy the Ring. He must do this to destroy Sauron and his forces of evil, who will otherwise overrun Middle Earth and basically obliterate everything. In order to destroy the Ring, Frodo must return to where the Ring was created –back into Mordor to Mount Doom. Thus for Yunior, Lola, and Frodo, “The only way out is in.”

After reading Bennett’s post about Beli, I realized that most people’s feelings toward Beli parallel my own toward Smeagol. Throughout “The Two Towers” movie, I felt awful for Smeagol – tortured by Sauron’s henchmen and tormented every moment by Gollum, the evil half of his personality from whom he seems to want to be free. However, by “The Return of the King,” I despised him for what he was doing to Frodo, leading him into the gigantic spider’s lair to be eaten alive, and especially for what he was doing to Sam (because nobody messes with Sam), trying to turn Frodo against him. But even though I hated what Gollum had become, I never wanted him to die the way that he did. I still felt terrible for him because of what he experienced – much the way most of us feel toward Beli because of her own unspeakably awful life of abuse.

Beli and Smeagol have alike endings with similar causes. Yunior says, “Beli [had] been waiting for something like her body her whole life….Like the accidental discovery of the One Ring” (94). Technically, Bilbo Baggins stumbles across the Ring, but Smeagol has found it first. And in a way, both of these discoveries destroy these characters. Beli’s beauty (in the Dominican sense) leads to her abuse, and her body (SPOILERS!) basically destroys her and kills her. And Smeagol’s discovery leads to the twisting of his mind, the corruption of his soul, and his awful death – all for the sake of “his precious.”

Maybe the world of Oscar Wao resembles Middle Earth more than Yunior thinks.

99 problems...

We talked today in class about the pressure that lies on a dictator for balance in their terror campaign; not enough fear and the peasants revolt, too much fear and they revolt. While this is a pressure there are ways to make it easier, and Trujillo has them down. The first is to target another group that is somewhat separate from your populace, but is similar enough to make them fear the charge. For Hitler it was the jews, for Trujillo, the haitians. This gives your people something to hate and fear.

Trujillo seems unaffected by this pressure and did whatever he pleased, but he is absorbed in and drunk with his own power. His pulling whatever women he wants lead to no resistance because of the Dominican hyper-masculinity that is present throughout the book. The populace is used to the hyper-masculinity and, because Trujillo is El Jefe, they process it as his balls are the biggest for him to be ruling.

Traditionally action is associated with manliness and masculinity, so it's odd that in a society where an exaggerated masculinity is the norm that no action is taken. In the face of El Jefe's masculinity the entire country is, like Abelard, reduced to "alternat[ing] between impotent rage and pathetic self-pity" (229). The entire hyper-masculine country is emasculated by the huevos of one man and his goons.

Madre del Diablo

Oscar's mother comes off as psychotic in this first section of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. There's no denying this. She tries to impress the woman's view of the Dominican hyper-masculinity on her son and fails. The first bit we see of it is when Oscar is eight and she tell him to bitch-slap the girl (Diaz 14). Who is also eight years old. That suggests either some deep pathology or a seriously messed up worldview. Now we find out later that some very bad things have happened to her earlier in life, and along with a culture centered on the agressive male it's understandable, but that's still messed up to teach a kid something like that at eight. 

That's not an isolated incident either. The way that Lola describes her treatment at the hands of her mother is nothing less than horrifying. One of my favorite moments in the book is when Lola smacks her mother's hand away and makes a stand for herself. Her act of burning the wig screams "NO MORE!" and I love it. Like I said, with what we learn later the mother is a much more sympathetic character, but at this point, what a puta.