The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Chapter 8 Summary

How It All Goes Down

Oscar's family and Yunior fly down to claim the body.
Al and Miggs don't show up for the funeral, proving they were never good friends in the first place. Sigh.
A year later, Oscar's mom's cancer comes back. She lives for just ten more months.
Then the family buries her next to Oscar.
And though the family hires lawyers in the DR, no charges are ever filed against the capitán, Grod, or Grundy. No surprise there either.
La Inca moves back to Baní, and everything is grim, grim, grim.

Things don't work out for Yunior and Lola.
One day, Lola calls and asks Yunior where he was last night. He doesn't have a good excuse, so Lola dumps him. Good for her. Way to have some self-esteem, girl.
Yunior gets with "strange girls" after the breakup. We're not sure what this means.
He spends a year hating Lola while also harboring a fantasy that they'll get back together.
Yunior hears that Lola met someone in Miami and is pregnant.
He calls her: "What the f***, Lola – " (3.8.2.2), he says, and she hangs up on him. Again: good choice. Yunior was clearly never gonna stop stepping out.

Years later, Yunior still thinks about Oscar. He has dreams about him.
In the dreams, Oscar is sitting on the edge of Yunior's bed in Demarest dorm. Only Oscar isn't thin like he was right before Grod and Grundy killed him, he's huge like before.
Then Yunior starts having a different dream.
Oscar and Yunior are in a ruined bailey [outer court of a castle]. Oscar is wearing a mask. Yunior seems to remember this scene from one of Oscar's movies.
Oscar holds out a book to Yunior. All the pages are blank. (Sound familiar? Oscar dreamed a similar thing once…)
He says to Yunior: "Zafa" (3.8.3.4).
Sometimes, Yunior looks up at Oscar, and Oscar has no face. Yikes. Those nights, he wakes up screaming. We don't blame him.

Yunior says it takes him ten years to heal from Oscar's death, and to succumb to the request Oscar was making of him in his dreams. It all comes together for Yunior when he wakes up next to someone he doesn't care about, with his nose covered in cocaine-snot and cocaine-blood.
He says, "OK, Wao, OK. You win" (3.8.4.1).
We think this means that Yunior decides to write a book about Oscar. A zafa.

Now, Yunior is living in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he teaches composition and creative writing at Middlesex Community College.
He even has a wife, Salcedo, whom he adores. He writes a lot.

Yunior and Lola still run into each other. She and her Cuban husband (and her daughter) moved back to Paterson, you see.
Yunior sees her at rallies and bookstores and on the street.
He used to dream that he and Lola would get back together.
In those dreams, they'd be in bed smoking weed, when Yunior would finally say the words that would save their relationship.
But Yunior wakes up before he can say those words. And he never gets a chance to say them in person, either. Whenever Yunior runs into Lola, they always talk about Oscar.

Lola's daughter wears three azabaches [charms against evil] around her neck.
La Inca and Yunior are the girl's godparents, and Yunior imagines that someday the charms will fail. That someday, the girl will hear the word fukú and dream of the Man with No Face.
He imagines Lola's daughter will show up at his house. And then Yunior will show her Oscar's manuscripts, books, and papers. She'll pore over them. She'll write more.
And she'll finally put an end to the curse.
When Yunior is feeling depressed, though, he doesn't think all of this will happen.
He remembers the last chapter of Watchmen, in which one character says to another: "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends" (afterword.23).

Eight months after Oscar dies, a package arrives in Paterson.
Oscar sent two manuscripts home. One manuscript includes chapters from Oscar's novel. The other is a long letter to Lola.
In the letter, Oscar tells Lola to look out for a second package.
He says about the second package: "This contains everything I've written on this journey. Everything I think you will need. You'll understand when you read my conclusions. (It's the cure to what ails us, he scribbled in the margins. The Cosmo DNA)" (3.final letter.2).
The package never arrives. Did it contain the zafa?
At least Oscar's letter to Lola contains some amazing news.
Before the capitán's goons killed Oscar, he and Ybón managed to sneak away to the beach for a whole weekend together.
There, they had sex. And it was amazing. In the end, Oscar finally experienced all of the intimacies that come along with being with someone. Really being with someone, someone who loved him back.
Oscar writes:
So this is what everybody's always talking about! Diablo [devil]! If only I'd known. The beauty! The beauty! (3.final letter.4)