Is the novel The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao really about Oscar Was? If so, what evidence can you cite from the novel to support your answer? If not, what do you think the novel is about, and what evidence can you cite from the novel to support your answer?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao can be interpreted as a straightforward novel with a plot and character development, or it can be seen through the lens of different fictional genres, primarily satire and the picaresque novel, and it can be regarded as an allegory of colonialism. In examining how the book works as a novel, one can consider it to be primarily about Oscar. Another possibility is to look at him as a subject but not the protagonist. Because Oscar has passed away and the story is presented largely through Yunior’s eyes, we can regard Yunior as the protagonist. In that case, the reader would be prompted to question the reasons that Yunior emphasizes particular features about his friend’s “brief” life and why he considers it “wondrous.”
Among the characteristics that the author emphasizes are Oscar’s affinity for reading not just fiction but fantasy and science fiction works. In doing so, he implies that the reader consider how this novel fits into those genres. The idealism of Oscar’s personality also supports this line of analysis. The “wondrous” aspects of Oscar’s characterization, including his huge size and his adventures within society’s margins, encourage a reading that situates the work as satire. The most likely influence or allusion here is to the protagonist of Voltaire’s eighteenth-century Candide, a naïve young man whose idealism and belief in love cushions his interactions with harsh, cruel society.
Oscar’s huge size and the title also suggest an earlier model, Rabelais’s sixteenth-century giant Gargantua, hero of The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel, which influenced Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. And for all Spanish-heritage writers, a likely influence would be the quintessential idealist hero, although he lived a long life, Don Quixote de la Mancha.
The singular focus on one character is also situated within Diaz’s exploration of Dominicans on the island and in the United States. No one is untouched by the political upheavals and the legacy of colonial repression dating back to Spanish colonialism but continuing through US-supported regimes. While Diaz identifies this legacy as a curse on Oscar’s family, by extension he may be encapsulating the entire history of social subordination into that character and family. The brief and wondrous tale thus becomes the history of all Dominican people.