The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

While Yunior remains the narrator, his tone becomes far more casual as he recounts his own involvement with the de León family. Yunior meets Lola during their freshman year at Rutgers-New Brunswick. The following year, they have a three-night romantic fling that she ends because she has a boyfriend. They remain friends, however, and in 1988, when Yunior is jumped by some townies and badly beaten, Lola is the only one who comes through for him, cooking and cleaning as he recovers from his injuries. Thus, he feels he owes her a debt.

At the end of that semester, Yunior hears that Lola’s brother, Oscar, almost killed himself over a girl by drinking two bottles of 151. To Lola’s great surprise, Yunior offers to live with Oscar in Demarest Hall to keep an eye on him while she studies abroad in Spain.

Despite the fact that they are both creative writing students, Yunior and Oscar have almost nothing in common. Yunior is a weightlifter who can bench 340 pounds and who regularly dates two or three women at a time. Oscar, meanwhile, remains isolated, unable to attract women, and overweight—he is now over 300 pounds. At this point, Oscar writes 15-20 pages of science fiction and fantasy a day, amassing five novels total so far. While Yunior doesn’t care much for these genres—his writing generally focuses on drug dealers and robberies—he can tell that Oscar is an immensely talented writer.

When Yunior’s girlfriend discovers his infidelity and dumps him, he throws himself into a new project: fixing Oscar. Genuinely touched by the offer, Oscar agrees to do everything Yunior tells him to do. The next morning at six a.m., Yunior takes Oscar jogging. Despite the pain and the constant jeers from onlookers, Oscar runs with Yunior four days a week. Yunior also encourages him to stop approaching women he doesn’t know and professing his love for them

One day in the middle of a run, Oscar stops and says he refuses to run anymore. After three days of verbal prodding, Yunior tries to physically force Oscar to get up from his desk to join him for a run. Oscar shoves him, and Yunior shoves him back, slamming him into the wall. Two days later, Lola calls from Spain. They argue. Yunior tells her, “Fuck off,” and Lola says she never wants to speak to him again.

From then on, Yunior and Oscar mostly stay out of each other’s ways. When Yunior sees Oscar dressed as Doctor Who on Halloween, Yunior mocks him with an anti-gay slur, adding that he looks like Oscar Wilde. Yunior’s friend mishears this as “Oscar Wao,” and from then on, everybody calls him that.

Later that semester, Oscar falls in love with Jenni Muñóz, a beautiful “Puerto Rican goth” who lives in Demarest and who rejected Yunior’s advances earlier that year. Despite receiving numerous rejections of his own from Jenni, a persistent Oscar continues to pursue her. By February, the two of them are friends. One day, Yunior even comes home to see Jenni and Oscar sitting in his room talking. Although he is fairly certain their relationship isn’t sexual, Yunior nevertheless begrudges Oscar. He writes, “[I]n other words, I was a player-hater. Me, the biggest player of them all” (185).

Then one day, Jenni loses interest in Oscar as she starts to spend more time with a tall punk kid from another dorm building. Rather than mope for a week then move on like he normally does, Oscar experiences lingering depression; he even stops writing. Two weeks later, Oscar walks in on Jenni and the punk kid having sex. In a rage, Oscar calls her names and trashes her room until someone fetches Yunior, who runs upstairs and puts him in a headlock. The school relocates Jenni to another resident hall, and Oscar is prohibited from visiting the women’s dormitories. At the end of the year, Yunior enters the housing lottery and wins a single room in another building.

On their last night together in Demarest, Oscar drinks two bottles of Orange Cisco, a very potent, now-discontinued alcoholic beverage. Rather than stay with him, Yunior leaves to meet up with a woman. He writes, “I guess I knew I should have stayed with him. Should have sat my ass in that chair and told him that shit was going to be cool, but it was our last night and I was fucking tired of him” (189).

After Yunior leaves, Oscar drinks another bottle of Cisco and wanders to the New Brunswick train station. He walks along the tracks until he is on a bridge 77 feet above Route 18. Later, Oscar recalls seeing a golden mongoose at this moment. When the mongoose disappears, Oscar jumps off the bridge. Rather than land 77 feet below onto the concrete, he lands on a garden divider. He wakes up in the hospital with two broken legs, sees Belicia and Yunior, and starts crying. When Lola arrives a day later from Spain, she upbraids Yunior: “Why didn’t you take care of Oscar? Why didn’t you do it?” (192).

Around Christmas of that year, Yunior runs into Lola on the bus. Thinking this might be his last chance with her, Yunior pulls an “Oscar” and asks Lola to dinner. They go to her house, and as he gives her oral sex, she pulls him up and makes him promise that he won’t lie to her. He agrees. The next semester, Yunior moves back in with Oscar.