preview

Humanity And Evil In Oscar Diaz's Oscar Wao

Decent Essays

According to this novel’s view of existence, what is mankind’s relationship to religion, universe, and supernatural: Specially, what does the novel state about determinism, human nature, and the nature of good and evil:
In Oscar Wao, Diaz correlates the relationship between spirituality and mankind with race and identity. The characters in the book discuss openly throughout about ghosts, curses, and the element of fuku. I think culturally the struggle to identify whether or not these things exist and what role they should play in one’s life are especially important. Fuku plays a huge part in this novel pertaining to the view of existence. Yunior, the narrator, believes that all things come back to the spiritual and long-lived curse. He …show more content…

As far as hierarchy goes, the novel blends the supernatural with the element of power, whether good or bad power. Trujillo, “the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated” (Diaz, 80), has power over every single character in the book. He also is claimed to have supernatural powers, that’s exactly how powerful he is. Trujillo challenges the power dynamic and brings up the conversation of good versus evil and how human nature can be a determining factor.
El Jefe (Trujillo) and his policies plays a significant part in the entire novel. Historically, Trujillo was a real person who actually was a dictator of the Dominican from 1930 to about 1961 when he was assassinated. As in the novel, Trujillo was in fact very influential, dangerous, seductive to women and almost supernatural in how powerful he was.
“Trujillo’s the president and you’re just a doctor. If he wants your daughters at the party you can do nothing but obey” (Diaz, 229).
In the novel Trujillo repeatedly interrupts the lives of many women because he always gets his way. Beli, for example, almost lost her life because she fell in love with a cohort of El Jefe. Likewise to El Jefe, the femme civil rights activists during his reign, the Mirabel Sisters, were referenced throughout the book. As with most activists, they were opposed to the way Trujillo ruled. This ultimately made them martyrs by getting killed in a sugar cane field, hence Oscar’s death and Beli’s brush with death in a similar way.

Get Access