Oscar 1

The footnotes in the first pages of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao serve several different functions. Footnotes are extra pieces of information that help aid the story by giving a larger insight into the history behind what the narrator is explaining in the story. Footnotes allow the author to give extra information to the reader without interrupting the story they are trying to tell. For example, the first footnote in the novel gives a brief history of the Dictator Trujillo Molina. The footnote explains his reign over the Dominican Republic and the advantages he took over the citizens of his country. This footnote helped you grasp the personality of Trujillo, which ultimately gives you better insight into how the fuku and him have a relationship that Dominicans have grown to fear. The second footnote gives you evidence to back up the story that John F. Kennedy and his family where cursed due to the fuku of helping assassinate Trujillo. The story tells of the Piper Saratoga going down with John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette aboard the same night that Dominican food is being cooked up for Johns father. The final footnote of this section explains Morgoth’s bane, it explains how a curse can be passed down to all those you love and how it will not go away until it gets the person it seeks. The footnotes tells a story of doom following the cursed and not relenting until their life is full of darkness and hopelessness.

The author includes footnotes into a story for a couple of reasons; they include them to help give extra information about the story and to help in keeping the story flowing without interruption. The author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao may have possibly included the footnotes as a kind of zafa, or counterspell to all of the fuku he was writing about in his story. If the author believes that what he is writing is fuku and will curse him then he might have wanted to include more background information in a way to clear the fuku and warn the reader. The other possible reason for the footnotes could just be to simply aid the reader by giving more information and insight about the story.