A Fixation on Bodies in "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

In Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the narrator has a fixation on bodies. The titular characteris defined, in part, by his body. His own sense of self-worth and the narrator's view of Oscar are determined by his appearance and lack of sex appeal, having been described as an "overweight freak" (15). Why? Why are both Oscar and the narrator fixated on bodies? Oscar has somewhat of an obsession with having sex but has been unsuccessful in doing so; he, the narrator, and people close to him all partially attribute it to his physical appearance. As discussed in class, the narrator's physical description of Oscar is comic book-esque. Puberty is describes as some sort of grotesque transformation, with it "scrambling his face into nothing you could call cute" and "splotching his face with zits" (16), as if it were not a natural part of growing up and instead something likened to a horrific transformation of a comic book villain, like the The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man.

Like Oscar, Belicia is - in part - defined her body; she gets a newfound sense of power from the development of her body. Beli "[passes] her school days dreaming about the various boys around her," but is not recognized as someone who people at her school would pursue (87). However, the changes to her body help her get what she always dreamed of. She is the opposite of Oscar, whose body is what he believes prevents him from getting what he wants. However, both of them are described by the narrator with the same level of intensity, with Beli being described in a gross and offensive yet humourous way: "Beli was transformed almost overnight into an underage stunner," with breasts "so implausibly titanic they made generous souls pity their bearer and drove every straight male in their vicinity to reevaluate his sorry life" (91-92). Beli is aware that men direct their attention towards her; she is aware that she is being objectified, yet she takes this in her stride, eventually "[seeing] beyond the catcalls" (93). Her body is what gets her noticed at school; it is what gives her an identity as she "[runs] into the future that her new body [represents] and never [looks] back" (94).

Lola, in comparison, is not necessarily defined by her body in the way that Oscar or Beli are. Firstly, she is not described with the same intensity or fixation. Her chapter is the only one so far that is written in the first person. From her telling of her story, it is clear that her body is her source of autonomy and rebellion, a representation of her independence and a key part of her pursuit to have "[her] own patch of world that [has] nothing to do with [her mother]" (55). It is mentioned that Lola was sexually assaulted as a child by an older man, which makes me wonder if a connection can be made to her taking control of her body as a young woman. Lola asks her friend to cut her hair short, not caring what her mother thinks. Is her cutting her hair a way for her to take back her body and have a choice in what happens to it? Is it representative of exercising her own independence from her mother?

It seems that in this novel, bodies are both representative of restriction or confinement, but also liberation and autonomy. However, my initial questions still stand: why is the reader so fixated on bodies, and more specifically Oscar and Beli's bodies and their sex appeal? Why is Lola's chapter written in the first person?

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