The document provides an analysis of Junot Diaz's novel Oscar Wao. It discusses how the novel constructs an authoritative voice through its narrative structure and use of multiple perspectives. It argues the novel presents a model of leadership through its ordering of character perspectives, bringing the characters and readers together through shared understanding. While the author is the sole voice, the document claims the novel does not present a dictatorial perspective due to its communication of shared interests and values. It also analyzes how the novel invites readers to understand characters struggling with their cultural identities and the lingering effects of Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican American community. Specific characters like Lola and events involving Beli are examined to show how the novel portrays the perpet

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Alexis Salas
12/6/2015
Paper #5
Unity Constructed by an Authoritative Voice
Prompt one:
Like a journalist, the novelist has to compete with other novelist to get their story heard.
If they win the competition, then that means that the story the novelist has to say will be the
strongest of all other people's stories because the form of communication came across
successfully in the readers minds. It has to be the most compelling and influential to a reader's
belief system moralistically and critically to make the voice of the novelist authoritatively
effective. This competition is a way that people with critical ideas will gravitate towards
competition of getting their voice heard. As long as the leader uses the voice out of good
intentions as they center the crowd's attention to one idea, the voice is indeed authoritatively
effective. If the voice is used out of interests indulgent to the self, unlike the interests shared by
others, then it is unauthoritative and thus, dictatorial. So, in Oscar Wao, as the form itself is
constructed of multiple perspectives to be understood by the reader, multiple interests are being
shared, and by the term interest, I mean the ways of interacting with the opposite sex. And the
characters ways of interacting with the opposite sex is another topic I will discuss later. In this
context of what's to be understood, sexism is the main idea to which the authoritative voice is
trying to center the attention of not only the characters, but also the readers.

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When dictatorship is in the picture, the kind of interests Trujillo, as Yunior describes and
criticizes, is dictatorial. With my understanding of the difference between authoritarian and
authoritative leadership, I disagree with how Yunior compares Trujillo's and the writer's voice to
be both dictatorial. I disagree because with my understanding that authoritarian leadership has
not constructive of shared interests intellectually between characters and readers, it occurs to me
that the form in the novel, by which Diaz communicates unity, does not make Diaz as a writer so
competitive that he is dictatorial like Trujillo. Just because Diaz is the only voice in the novel
does not mean that there is dictatorship and lack of shared interests and values about sexual
interaction. It is authoritative but it is not dictatorial.
One way you can see that it is obvious that Diaz is communicating this mentality of
leadership is the order of perspectives in the narrative presentation of Oscar Wao that is, in my
opinion, authoritative as opposed to dictatorial. The order of perspectives in the form of the
novel goes to show a model similar to the one of unity lead by an authoritative spokesperson.
The narrative presentation coming from the perspectives of different characters are like multiple
progresses. By the term progress, I mean progress of a lifestyle in the perspective of each
character. Then for each character's involvement with each other to be better understood by the
reader, the main voice that's coming from the author is communicating reason and morale just by
sharing the ideas in the form of the order of multiple perspectives and the journalistic tone and
allusions. At the same time, within the novel, the authoritative writer brings together people by
writing in a form to allow the understanding of the cultural presentation of the characters by the
reader to occur.

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In addition to authoritative effect of the form by which the voice constructs leadership
and unity in Oscar Wao, the journalistic tone itself communicates competition by which the
writer comes in as the authoritative leader, not dictator. By the informative tone in the writing,
we can tell that it is intentional because it is consistently throughout the novel short paced and
charged with enthusiasm as much as the way the writing is often communicated in news articles.
In the narrative about Beli, for instance, the style is informative with the specific word choice
that refers to the influence of social media. Just the use of the word “counterprogramming” to
describe the conflicting comparison between two of Beli’s lovers Arquimedes and Hipolito
Mejia shows how the specifically intentional the voice is informative of the DR history (Diaz,
109-110). It is also objective because it is direct and concrete. It does not communicate any
impression of any of the character’s perspective in an abstract way.
On the other hand, yes the author is in control of the information via literary devices of
the informative journalistic tone and word-choice but it is only authoritative if the writer share
information on same ground with the readers by sharing similar interests for the future.
Prompt two:
Oscar Wao invites its readers to think that people who are not "normal" are people who
are struggling to conform to the American society because they inherited a culture of a country
other than the one they are born in. Especially if their native country had just been through a
revolution of police violence and dictatorship, and their parents lived through it since they were
small children, the "not-so-normal" individuals suffer culture shock prolonged by the unresolved

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social destruction that occurred to their parents. It is through an indirect chain of consequences of
Trujillo's dictatorship of sexism and hyper-maleness that Dominican American individuals like
Diaz's characters, Lola and Oscar face sexism still and struggle to share the same background
with the rest of the individuals in the American society. In my point of view of America as a
melting pot of multiple communities of multiple ethnic backgrounds influenced by different
historical events, there is no such thing as "normal". The author is using the term "normal" to
show that the individuals in the Dominican American community are perpetuating the
unresolved social destruction that occurred in their native country because they are hesitating to
accept who they are. By dividing this novel into multiple perspectives of each character, the
reader is invited to connect each character into a family so that the reader sees them together the
reader can see how prevalent the struggle of being "normal" really is in the Dominican American
community. We see over and over again from one Dominican American character after another
the same kind of self-denial, If something is not working, if the character is struggling, then that
means they are not normal enough to accept and love enough to look for a social solution.
To explain how the characters inability to accept their identity invites the reader to realize
how the social destruction of sexism lingers unresolved in the community, Diaz illustrates Lola's
character with an attitude similar to a misanthropist. Lola clearly is unaware of who she really is
in her teenage years. As she narrates about her runaway experience, she describes her appearance
as the only way she identifies who she is: goth, "dressed in all black". Then unexpectedly, she
rejects the male attention at the beach who threw "lines at [her] like, Who fuckin' died? What's
with your hair?...You a good-looking girl, you should be in a bikini" with a quick and cold
distrust of a response: "why, so you can rape me?" (Diaz, 65). In this scene, the character shows

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that sometimes a Dominican American girl can naturally be self-respectful by sensing the need to
avoid that kind of hyper-male, intrusively sexist attention even though she is unaware of her
origins. Then later, when she does establish her identity by becoming "the president of her
sorority, the head of S.A.L.S.A. and co-chair of Take Back the Night" (168), she finally
understands her culture enough to get up leave for Spain. The illustration of this kind of
character goes to show how inclined a Dominican American would become if they did learn their
origins to know who they are. It shows that it can be successful for a Dominican American
individual to accept their identity if they'd just throw the word "normal" out the window and
embrace their origins with some "sentimental education" (167) because in America that is the
norm: everyone trying to figure themselves out culturally.
Furthermore, by "sentimental education" I mean literature, language, folklore, myths and
storytelling all being used as a crucial element of culture to educate the history of the country the
Dominican American individual's parents had grown up in and ran away from in order to
understand them and accept who they are. For their Dominican parent's "annexationists
subservience to the North" (111), the lifestyle of living in the curse of sexism and dictatorship
that they taught their American born children should be recognized with compassion and shared
in each and every one of those families. In this case, the novel asks the reader to consider that the
people who are not normal are just trying to figure out how to accept their parents for who they
are and how to establish their cultural identity.
Prompt four:

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To invite readers to adopt a "zafa", the author designs this novel in a fairytale like order
of events for the reader to follow at a pace that allows them to picture it easily enough to
internalize impressively the severity of sexism. By following this order, the author is invited to
consider the consequences of perpetuating sexist behavior. In addition to the fairytale design, the
usage of the word "curse" or "fuku" is emphasized throughout the novel so that the reader
understands the severity of sexism. In terms of the "fuku" or "curse", Diaz along with characters
like La Inca and Beli, sexism is the one problem that perpetuates the destruction in the
Dominican American community.
In one instance, just for naming a child, the curse coming from the Gangster overtook
Beli like a tsunami. By saying that he "thought [she] didn't know who her family was" (Diaz,
138) during the time Beli is deciding her first child's middle name, the gangster is perpetuating
the curse by assimilating the dictatorial figure. As he assimilates this kind of behavior, he
dictates their intimate relationship by completely ignoring Beli's interests as a woman to indulge
into his own just for naming a child. Not only is he being selfish but he is also treating Beli, as
any woman is treated by a "gangster": property that has no emotional bond with a family or
group of friends. Even though Beli tries to explain that she wants her future son's middle name to
be "serious, because he's going to be a doctor, like [her] papa", the gangster expresses little
receptive response and dictates the decision to be of his own interests like a total dick. He is not
sharing any perspective because he has no compassion and believes that women do not have the
right to decide and that just because he is a man, he has the right to dictate any idea to decide for
the next action. Therefore, the novel is using characters like the gangster and this kind of

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behavior towards Beli to explain how sexism acts out into a curse described by victims like La
Inca and Beli, Trujillo's dictatorship of hyper-maleness.
In another instance, the novel also explains that one single destruction of a family as a
result of the curse doubles its effect because family ties are so crucial for society to function. All
because of oppression of sexism Trujillo's dictatorship, Beli is living as a foster child desperate
to feel "free" to be whatever she wants to be (134). If her family had not been massacred by
Trujillo's, La Inca would not have to be there to struggle up an authoritative role model that her
father's presence could have successful done for Beli. If it hadn't been the dictatorship's violent
cause of this kind of destruction, La Inca's motivation to raise Beli with "strength" would not
have been traumatically crushed into pity from finding Belie as a "burnt girl locked in a chicken
coop" (128). Instead of parenting the child out of family pride and dignity, because she doesn't
have it, La Inca despairs in Beli that she is "cursed" (128). The order of these consequences of
the sexism in Trujillo's dictatorship is like a form of a fairytale that the author is using to explain
that banding families out of sexual prudence is the one value that underlies a happy "zafa" on
behalf of Dominican Americans if the order is reciprocated. If the reader sees this order of
consequences of sexism in one dictatorship of Santo Domingo, then the reader would then learn
that the reason why sexual prudence is important is because sexism, the curse, leads to the same
suffering Beli went through.
Conclusively, because the reader is already invited in the novel to understand Beli's
callous and unforgiving personality with compassion, the reader will more likely gravitate
towards an idea of a "zafa" to internalize as part of their belief system/values that humans thrive
on. Clearly, the story of La Inca finding Beli burnt up in a cage is foreshadow of Beli wanting be

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free like a bird. The articulate design of the sequential order of events, like the foreshadow,
shows how far the oppression of sexism can go.