In Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he includes many footnotes to explain Dominican history, nerd culture, and anything else the author finds important. One of the footnotes that caught my attention the most was one explaining “the Mongoose” that keeps appearing as a savior character in the book.
A mongoose is a small, ferocious animal that lives in Southern Europe and Asia, and in Africa. This carnivore, which looks similar to a weasel, was also introduced to many of the Caribbean islands by settlers from across the ocean.
The Mongoose appears in many folktales, seemingly originating in India (as Díaz’s footnote says). The first Mongoose folktale can be found in the Panchatantra, which is a legendary Indian collection of short stories, estimated to be written around 200 BC. This link is a video representation of the story, told in the original Hindi. For an English version of the story, you can read the Mongoose story from the Panchatantra translated here.
The Mongoose story was so popular and well-known that European men heard and recorded the tale. Rudyard Kipling, perhaps best known for The Jungle Book and Just So Stories, wrote the story of the Mongoose in “Rikki Tikki Tavi,” a short story that appears in The Jungle Book (click here for the best part of the movie adaptation).
The most interesting connection between that I have made between the Mongoose story and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the moral at the end of the folk tale. It says that it is best to not make hasty decisions that you may regret later. The Mongoose appears to Beli and Oscar, and when it does, it seems to be directly responding to each character making a hasty decision that they will regret later. For Beli, it is after she proudly talks about having an affair with a powerful government man and disrespecting his wife. She made a rash decision to openly admit to such an affair. For Oscar, it is as he is standing on the bridge, waiting to jump to his death. The Mongoose appears and keeps him from dying, only injuring himself, and Oscar gets to continue living. Later, the Mongoose appears again in the canefield after Oscar is beaten the first time, a result of his blatant interest and love for Ybón, the girlfriend of a policeman. With each of these appearances, the people the Mongoose appears to have just made hasty decisions that they will soon regret.