Who is Oscar Wao and do I care?He is the peg in the novel through which the other characters and their story are hung. The epigraphs tell us of the importance of brief,nameless lives. That one person could be a nation. The book is about a real individual:nerdy,sci-fi lover,fat,virginal Oscar. This is not the coming of age story of an immigrant in America,since as it unfolds the story expands backwards into a history of the Dominican Republic:a story of mother and grandparents like ripples expanding outwards. The structure is important. The deeper into Oscar's life we push the more present his history becomes,a history he never becomes aware of,only the reader gets to assemble all the pieces. The narrator, his college friend, relates Oscar's story backwards with a nod to the the fuku curse that has stricken the family over the generations and to Oscar's living through fantasy sci-fi,The Watchmen,Lord of the Rings,X-men,dungeons- and- dragons escapism for the boy who cannot pull girls and to ward off the terror of the evils of Trujilloism.