Humans needs many things to survive and one of the most important needs is hope or faith. Having faith has helped humans to fight mental battles and have mental peace. The novels by Salman Rushdie and Junot Diaz have portrayed faith in a similar but a very different manner. Both novels described the power of faith, but on one hand Rushdie’s writing shows the consequences of losing faith and on the other hand Diaz’s novel shows the never-ending faith of people in what they believed. The power of faith in Diaz’s novel is described as fuku. Fuku is a belief that bad things will happen to the people who think bad of Trujillo like a huge rock and fall on you out of the sky or the food you ate can kill you tomorrow or a hurricane would sweep your family out. This means that anyone who will think bad or try to do bad to Trujillo will be struck by fuku. According to me fuku will only be experienced by the people who truly believe in it. The novel ‘The brief wondrous life of Oscar wad’ portrays that “everyone in Santo Domingo has a fuku story” which means the all the people who were aware of fuku believed in it even though it didn’t happen to them. Fuku is just the power of faith in people as even though it is supernatural or illogical, people have faith that if they think bad of anyone, they will be cursed by fuku and people who have done bad things believe they have been cursed with fuku. The power of faith in Rushdie’s novel is described as the faith of a person in God. In the days when there was no radio, no army camps, and no soldiers hiding behind the crests of the mountains a mans only way of attaining mental peace was to worship God. Aadam Aziz lost his faith in God, which made a hole in him making him “vulnerable to women and history”. This means that when Aadam lost his faith in God and decided never to “kiss earth for any God” made an emptiness in him which he couldn’t fill. After many years the hole was filled but this time it was with hate and sadness. The emptiness was filled but it didn’t make Aadam feel whole, he was no longer connected to his past self and losses his identity. The power of faith portrayed by Rushdie is the faith of people in God. Aadam Aziz lost his faith in God and was “caught in a strange middle ground”. God is a symbol of hope for everyone who truly believes in God and Aziz losing his hope, so when he tried to pray again after years he was confused and “knocked forever into the middle place” not able to worship God and not able to completely disbelieve in God’s existence. In ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ fuku was never seen by anyone but everyone had faith in fuku, they believed in it. Diaz was also a true believer of fuku. He believed fuku killed JFK. Fuku was “a little gift to America, a small repayment for an unjust war”. After the success of American military in Santo Domingo every solider and every man behind them was cursed with fuku even though they didn’t believe in it, but “every single Dominican, from the richest jabao in Mao to the poorest giley in El Buey, from the oldest Anciano Sanmacorisano to the littlest carajito in San Francisco” believed and had faith in fuku, so the Americans who didn’t believe in fuku also had to suffer the curse of fuku. The the other hand in “Mid nights children” Aziz lost his faith in God; he lost his hope which created a void in him and “altered his vision”. Aziz having an emptiness in him spent five years away from his home and his past self. Him travelling for these years altered his mentality and filled the void in him with hate and sadness. He again prayed but he was “trapped between belief and disbelief”. Aziz with all this hate in his heart was unable to worship God and was not able to fully disbelief in God. He lost his faith which made him confused and vulnerable and permanently altered him, creating a permanent void in him. The novels show the downside and upside of faith and belief. Diaz shows that having faith in something supernatural such as fuku can make it feel real even for the people who don’t believe in it and Rushdie shows if we lose faith in something or disbelieve in something, it doesn’t mean that it is not there. We can see this as in Diaz’s novel people of Santo Domingo had faith in fuku and the Americans didn’t, still the Americans were cursed by fuku in the long run and in Rushdie’s novel losing faith in God changed the life of Aziz as he lost his identity, and it created a hole of emptiness and sadness in him. Both the authors portrayed the power of faith in different ways, but the meaning was quite similar.
