Oscar's Triumph

Yunior decides soon after he and Oscar room together that he is going to fix Oscar.  Yunior is going through troubles of his own: "Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive" (175).  I think in this statement Yunior is acknowledging that his effort to fix Oscar resulted in fixing his own problems.  In the end, it is Oscar who saves Yunior.  After Oscar's death, Yunior dreams about Oscar: "Dude is holding up a book, waving for me to take a closer look, and I recognize this scene from one of his crazy movies.... It takes me a while before I notice that Oscar's hands are seamless and the book's pages are blank" (325).  Oscar had a similar dream shortly before his death.  As both of the boys are writers, I found it interesting that they had nearly the same dream about a blank book.  It seemed a reminder to both Oscar and Yunior that they were able to decide what they wanted to do with their life, regardless of fuku.  I also wondered if it had a relation to Abelard's missing book.  When Yunior finally gets his life together, gets married and holds a job, he credits Oscar: "These days I write a lot.  From can't see in the morning to can't see at night.  Learned that from Oscar.  I'm a new man, you see, a new man, a new man" (327).  Yunior becomes the "new man" that he tried to turn Oscar into.  Although it is debated on whether or not Oscar's death was a triumphant one, Oscar was the one who fixed Yunior: "finally I woke up next to somebody I didn't give two shits about, my upper lip covered in coke-snot and coke-blood and I said, OK, Wao, OK.  You win" (325).