Revealing the Páginas En Blanco

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New meaning arises from the blank pages as Oscar gains confidence as a writer. Oscar is an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction that is considered the anti-hero of this novel. He began to write pieces that he hopes might turn him into “the Dominican Tolkien” (Diaz 192). The novel continuously reinforces the connection between the magical elements of the history related to the Caribbean cultural and the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and comics. When literature adopts the lenses of sci-fi, magical realism, and comics, it becomes a viable alternative to History’s “single voice” and to silence’s páginas en blanco. The structure of the novel itself derives from the comic book genre, for it is loosely organized around four characters modeled after the Fantastic Four. The ability for “freaks” or outsiders to be heroes is another important dimension of this particular comic. The quote at the beginning of the novel “Of what import are brief, nameless lives…to Galactus?” is an allegory to Oscar’s status as a hero. The importance of the brief, nameless lives is that the imagined, marginalized personal histories become highlighted and displace a dictator’s “History.”

Díaz’s novel attempts to fill the páginas en blanco that Oscar left in his death, as well as the story of the fukú of the Cabral-de León’s. Seeking to accommodate diaspora, the novel presents multiple stories that is part of a greater Caribbean history. Oscar is clearly not your typical hero or normal Dominican, but he surprisingly transforms from a sentimental nerd into a courageous, true Dominican man. In Oscar’s final letter to Yunior, Oscar finds his love of the little intimacies by saying “So this is what everybody’s always talking about! Diablo! If only I’d known. The beauty! The beauty!” (Díaz 335). His college roommate, Yunior, highlights the role of language and literature in history. He also underscores the importance of writing history in new ways, all while insisting on the impossibility of telling the whole story.

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Work Cited

Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead, 2007. Print.

Hanna, Monica. “‘REASSEMBLING THE FRAGMENTS’: Battling Historiographies,

Caribbean Discourse, and Nerd Genres in Junot Diaz's the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar

Wao.” Callaloo, vol. 33, no. 2, 2010, pp. 498–520.

Sáez, Elena Machado. “Dictating Desire, Dictating Diaspora: Junot Díaz's ‘The Brief

Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ as Foundational Romance.” Contemporary Literature, vol.

52, no. 3, 2011, pp. 522–555.