The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Book 2, Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

The Dark Age. After graduation, Oscar moves back home with his mother and futilely looks for a job in a post-Reagan economy. He starts substitute teaching at Don Bosco, his old high school, and eventually becomes a full time teacher there. Don Bosco is still as miserable as Oscar remembers, and he has no knack for teaching. The kids tease him as much as his fellow students had at Rutgers. Oscar notices that the kids doing the most teasing are the students of color, rather than the white students, as it was when he went to Don Bosco. Oscar tries to reach out to them by supporting the kids who are bullied and starting a science-fiction and fantasy club, but the students do not respond to him at all. His only friend on the staff is a fellow teacher name Nataly, but she transfers to another suburb and stops returning his calls. Al, Miggs, Maritza, and Olga have all lost touch as well, and Oscar now has no social life whatsoever.

Oscar’s family isn’t doing very well either. Lola gave up on Japan to move to New York with Yunior, Oscar’s mother is still working too hard, and his uncle Rodolfo has started using heroin again. Oscar doesn’t want to become bitter, but he can’t see any way out of it. His depression, which he calls the Darkness, also returns full force. On his bad days, he can’t get out of bed or write and he snaps at his mother.

On Oscar’s good days he apologizes, and visits Lola in Washington Heights. Lola had gotten pregnant, but had an abortion when she found out that Yunior was cheating on her. Oscar keeps Lola company and starts to plan a science-fiction fantasy quartet that will make him the next Tolkien. Sometimes he dreams about the Mongoose. But these high points are erased when he realizes that the new generation of nerds don’t like the role-playing games he used to play.

Oscar Takes a Vacation. After Oscar has been a teacher at Don Bosco for three years, his mother decides it is time to go back to Santo Domingo, and she takes Oscar with her. Oscar is in almost high spirits; his latest diet has worked and he is excited to return to the island. Yunior praises the virtues of summer in Santo Domingo (that extend to everyone but the poor and the Haitian), and imagines that Oscar thinks he will find true love with an Island girl.

The Condensed Notebook of a Return to a Nativeland. Oscar’s mother gets dressed up for the plane ride back to the DR and acts like royalty throughout the flight. Oscar falls asleep, only waking up in confusion when everyone starts to clap as the airplane touches ground. Santo Domingo has been arising anew from the ashes of Trujillo’s Era, and La Inca has done very well with her bakeries, and has decided to move to a nicer neighborhood called Mirador Norte. La Inca, showing her age though she is as fit as ever, welcomes Oscar home with a kiss and cries when she sees Beli home again at last. Oscar adjusts to the DR again, especially the abundance of beautiful women.

Evidence of a Brother’s Past. Lola takes picture after picture of Oscar, all over the island. He finally looks happy, if confused, and he doesn’t look fat.

Oscar Goes Native. The first week, Oscar has a lot of catching up to do – with his family as well as re-acclimating to Dominican culture and the shock of poverty everywhere. In the midst of all that, Oscar decides to extend his stay on the island rather than go back to Paterson when Lola leaves. He soon has second thoughts about this because he feels so un-Dominican, but he keeps his mind off it with his writing. Then Oscar meets a puta (prostitute) named Ybón Pimentel, and says that she is the start of his real life.

La Beba (Babygirl). Ybón, a gorgeously golden-skinned middle-aged woman, lives two houses over from La Inca, and has just returned from working in Europe. Ybón asks Oscar what he’s reading, and says she recognizes him from La Inca’s old pictures. Oscar finds her incredibly worldly and attractive, and nearly dies when she invites him in to her house. She pours them drinks and talks to him for hours about her life. Oscar thinks she is fascinating, if eccentric, and falls hard for her. Beli and La Inca are furious at Ybón’s profession, but Oscar argues that there is more to her and her family than prostitution. La Inca and Beli try to forbid him from seeing her, but he refuses to listen.

Oscar decides, for once in his life, not to overwhelm Ybón with the strength of his crush. It drives him crazy thinking of Ybón all day, but he waits till one in the afternoon of the next day to see her again. When Oscar gets to her house, there is a red jeep there with national police plates. Oscar runs away, ashamed that he didn’t realize there were other men in Ybón’s life, but comes back the day after anyway. Ybón welcomes him in.

A Note from Your Author. Yunior breaks in to address the fact that Ybón is not the stereotypical underage, drug-addicted prostitute. Yunior says he could have replaced Ybón with the quintessential Caribbean puta, but that choice would have destroyed the integrity of a “true” account of Oscar Wao’s life. He reminds us that it is our job to decide if any of this is real.

The Girl from Sabana Iglesia (Church.) Ybón looks young, even though she is 36. She complains about the little imperfections in her body, and how hard she has to work for the body she had for free at 16. Oscar thinks she is just as beautiful now, and tells her so. Soon, Oscar stops writing and spends all his time at Ybón’s house, even when he knows she’ll be working. La Inca is still angry, but one of Oscar’s uncles is ecstatic that Oscar is finally a real Dominican man.

Ybón tells Oscar everything that has happened to her in her life, and about some of her clients (who she calls boyfriends), even though it makes Oscar uncomfortable. In turn, Oscar tells Ybón of the few life experiences he has had, including the time he attempted suicide. Ybón pours them both a drink and toasts, “To Life!” Oscar is with Ybón often enough to see her on her bad days as well. Oscar cajoles Ybón into getting out of bed, and drives her home when she inevitably drinks too much at dinner. Though Oscar doesn’t actually know his way around the island, he calls his friend Clives, a taxi-driver, to lead him home.

La Inca Speaks. La Inca gets one small paragraph of narration, to say that Oscar did not meet Ybón outside her house. He met her in a cabaret.

Ybón, As Recorded by Oscar. Ybón says that she never wanted to come back to Santo Domingo, but that she ran out of money and options. Though she doesn’t like being back in the DR after seeing more of the world, she knows that she can get used to anything.

What Never Changes. Yunior breaks in to ask whether, in all the talking, Oscar ever had a chance to be physically intimate with Ybón. Yunior says that nothing sexual happens that summer, but Oscar remains hopeful that if he comes back at Thanksgiving and Christmas Ybón will let her guard down. Oscar realizes that he is one of Ybón’s few real friends, in keeping with Ybón’s motto of “travel light,” a theory that she extends to friends as well as furniture. Oscar knows that Ybón is having sex with other men, but he decides not to care, so that he does not repeat the mistakes he made with Ana Obregón.

Oscar at the Rubicon. As August begins, Ybón starts to talk about her boyfriend the Capitán. Oscar insists that the Capitán won’t be jealous of him, but Ybón isn’t so sure. Oscar knows that he is getting too lovesick for Ybón, but he doesn’t know how to stop loving her. He dreams of Ybón’s naked body and knows that it is too late to try to convince himself not to love her.

Last Chance. Two days later, Oscar’s uncle shows Oscar bullet holes on the side of their house. La Inca and Beli try to get Oscar to heed the warning, and Oscar feels a strange feeling of premonition. But Oscar ignores all of this and heads over to Ybón’s house anyway.

Oscar Gets Beat. In mid-August, Oscar meets the Capitán and gets his first kiss. Yunior then steps back to explain how this all happened. Oscar follows Clives’ taxi home from dinner, with Ybón passed out in the front seat, when he is pulled over by the cops. As the cops ask Oscar to get out of the car, Ybón wakes up, leans over, and kisses Oscar. Yunior admits that he has forgotten his own first kiss, but that Oscar never would. Unfortunately, the Capitán is standing behind the police officers and witnesses everything. They yank Oscar out of the car, and Ybón simply passes out in the passenger seat again.

The Capitán, a career military man in his 40s, was too young to help during Trujillo’s regime, but found plenty of work during the Balaguer years and soon rose to the top of the ranks. He regards Oscar coolly, and a terrified Oscar blurts out that he is an American citizen. The Capitán just laughs and says that he is, too. Oscar insists that he didn’t do anything wrong, and that Ybón had said that she and the Capitán were broken up. The Capitán grabs Oscar by the throat, and Yunior says that a more handsome man would have been shot on the spot. Instead, the Capitán takes pity and simply beats Oscar and hands him over to the two police officers. The Capitán then drives off with Ybón, pulling her by the hair.

The two police officers, whom Yunior calls Solomon Grundy and Gorilla Grod, start to drive Oscar to the cane fields. They chit chat while Oscar frantically tries to think of a way to escape in the back seat. He looks out the window and thinks he sees a man with no face. The police officers walk Oscar into the cane field and Oscar has an intense feeling of déjà vu, but is brought back to reality as the police officers begin to beat him with the butts of their pistols. Yunior calls it the “beatdown to end all beatdowns,” and says he is uncertain whether the police officers were trying to scare Oscar or kill him. The officers stop when he is just shy of death, and Oscar falls unconscious.

Clives to the Rescue. Clives the taxi driver had the bravery and the kindness to follow the police officers and find Oscar after the police officers were done with him. A singing voice leads Clives to Oscar’s unconscious body, and Clives convinces some Haitian workers from a nearby batey (sugar worker town) to help him carry Oscar out of the cane field.

Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind. Oscar remembers dreaming about the Mongoose while he was unconscious. The Mongoose asks Oscar if he wants less or more. Thinking of his family, and his own optimistic young self, Oscar says he wants more. The Mongoose then speaks three words that are blanked out of the text.

Dead or Alive. The doctors catalogue Oscar’s injuries and La Inca and Beli begin to pray. Each refuses to acknowledge the similarity to Beli’s past experience.

Briefing for a Descent Into Hell. Oscar lays unconscious for three days, remembering nothing but an “Aslan-like figure with golden eyes” and a man wearing a mask holding a blank book.

Alive. As soon as Oscar is able to travel, Beli arranges a plane flight home to Paterson. Oscar insists that he wants to stay to be with Ybón. He resists all attempts to move him, despite the extra pain it causes his recovering body, and actually appreciates the beating for showing him that things really were serious between him and Ybón. He also realizes that the family curse might actually be real.

Oscar tries to get himself to Ybón’s house, but sees that her car isn’t there. Finally, three days after the beating, Ybón comes to visit Oscar. Beli calls Ybón a puta, but Ybón ignores Beli and goes to Oscar. She is wearing white, and has two black eyes courtesy of the Capitán. Ybón tells Oscar that they can never see each other again, and that she and the Capitán (Yunior blurs out his real name here) are getting married. Oscar finally agrees to go home to the United States.

Lola meets Beli and Oscar at the airport, crying when she sees the damage all over Oscar’s face. She tells Yunior what happened, and Yunior calls Oscar. Oscar ignores Yunior’s questions about the beating, too full of the news that he, Oscar, has kissed a girl. When Yunior goes to visit Oscar, Oscar starts to tell Yunior about the fukú.

Some Advice. Yunior extends Ybón’s advice to the whole world. Travel light.

Paterson, Again. Oscar returns home and heals, but can’t let go of his love for Ybón. He dreams of his family getting beaten in the cane field in his place, but he runs away instead of saving them. Oscar tries to watch his old favorite Japanese movies, and rereads his beloved The Lord of the Rings again, but he has to stop when he reaches the description of Orcs as “black men like half-trolls.” Six weeks after his beating, Oscar dreams of the cane field again. This time he doesn’t run away, but stays and listens to the sounds of the violence and the pain.