Student Question
Are Yunior and the unnamed narrator the same person in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
Quick answer:
In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Yunior and the unnamed narrator are not the same person. The story is told from two perspectives: Yunior, Oscar's friend and roommate, and Lola, Oscar's sister. Yunior reflects on his past actions and their impact on Oscar, while Lola offers insights into their family's struggles with the fuku curse. The unnamed narrator provides a broader, mature perspective on Dominican American life and history.
Your question identifies the difficulty that we have as readers in identifying the narrators of this prize-winning story. You are right in noting that the story is told from the perspective of two characters, and one of these is clearly identified as being Yunior, the friend of Oscar who only shares a room with him because of his friendship and affection for Lola, Oscar's sister.
The introduction to the story, as we come to realise later on in the novel, is written from the perspective of Lola, Oscar's sister. Note what she writes about the book she is writing:
Even now as I write these words I wonder if this book ain't a zafa of sorts. My very own counterspell.
The important concept of fuku, which is the equivalent of a curse that cannot be shaken and which Lola believes haunts her family and herself, haunts Lola, and indeed, it...
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"has its fingers round my throat." Her attempt to exorcise the fuku is through recounting the story of Oscar's brief wondrous life and how he lived it.
Therefore the unnamed narrator is not Yunior, and the tale is told from the perspective of two characters: Lola and Yunior.
What distinguishes Yunior the character from Yunior the narrator in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
Yunior as a character is distinguished from his role as the novel’s narrator by his age and relative immaturity. The narrator is an adult with a broader perspective; growing up and the passage of time have provided him with a different way of looking at the events in which he and Oscar were involved. The narrator is also able to situate Oscar’s personal story within the context of Dominican American social life as well as Dominican political history.
Yunior’s changing perspective has forced him to reevaluate his own role as Oscar’s friend, including his responsibility for encouraging macho attitudes toward Lola and other women; in turn, he must ask if his own obsession with sexual conquest contributed to Oscar’s negativity toward his own body. Although the characters of Yunior and Oscar both grow from teenagers to adults, Oscar is a romantic who seems unable to lose his adolescent attitudes toward love and sex. In looking back, Yunior the narrator must wonder whether he contributed to the confused young man’s demise and, more generally, what friendship means.