Oscar: An Inquiry into the Nature of Sanity?

This is a highly readable and insightful study of the relationship between the individual and society. The society is that of the island of Providencia, and the individual is Oscar Bryan. Oscar is an extraordinary person, and his life is not to be taken as typical of lives lived in the Caribbean. Yet it is, to paraphrase Oscar himself, only through the study of the extraordinary that we come to some sort of understanding of the ordinary. Through Oscar’s life we see magnified some of the basic problems of the relationship between the individual and his society as they are manifested in the Caribbean: the continuing conflict between practical and ideal moralities as revealed in the struggle between “reputation” and “respectability”; the manipulation of language and speech to confuse, deceive, and inform; the paradox that requires people to seek privacy from each other if they wish to remain together. Wilson has contrived not only a fascinating portrait of a unique personality, but he also offers valuable speculations on the meaning of madness and the nature of the hidden and elusive bonds that unite, or divide, an individual and his society.