Summary

In the section “The Dark Age,” Oscar graduates college and returns to Paterson where he winds up in a teaching job at the same high school he attended as a student. The kids still make fun of him because he is overweight, and he watches as other kids are bullied just as he was. He tries to reach out to them by starting a science fiction club but no one attends. He befriends one faculty member named Nataly about whom he has sexual fantasies. His home life is about the same as always. Desperation sets in as he sees himself becoming an old bitter dork. On some days he suffers meltdowns where he curses his mother and throws students out of his class for no reason. Sometimes he’d hold his uncle...