America Is in the Heart

by

Carlos Bulosan

America Is in the Heart: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
A young Filipino boy, Carlos Bulosan, is watching a man emerge from the tall grass that surrounds his family’s rural plot of land in the farming town of Binalonan, in the Philippine province of Pangasinan. The man carries a bundle and appears anxious as he sits down and looks towards Carlos’s small family home. The man seems familiar with the barrio, or village, and an excited Carlos runs across the animal pasture to “the rich piece of land” where his father is using a carrabao, or water buffalo, to plow the field. Carlos’s father asks him why he has been running, and Carlos responds that his brother, Leon, is the man who arrived carrying a bundle. Father insists that Leon is either still off fighting in Europe or perhaps even dead.
The novel opens by introducing the close family bonds that connect Carlos with his father and brother, Leon. From the start, Bulosan introduces the importance of family and the land as two elements that will shape the story going forward. Especially during the book’s first part, Carlos and his family’s intimate connection to their land specifically, and to nature more broadly, will influence the way Carlos comes to view his place in the world.     
Themes
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Poverty Theme Icon
Carlos, however, tells his father to look at the stranger when he emerges in the field. Father realizes that the stranger is indeed Leon, and he introduces Carlos to his brother. Leon left to fight in Europe when Carlos was very young, so the two brothers have not formally met until this day. “Welcome home, soldier,” Carlos says to Leon. Leon soon imparts an “affectionate glance” at the water buffalo, takes the rope that tethers the animal from his father, and starts “plowing the common earth that had fed [Carlos’s] family for generations.” Although he has just met Leon, Carlos writes that his brother’s time spent in a distant land will inspire Carlos later in life by providing an “assurance of righteous anger” in the face of the “crushing terror that filled [Carlos’s] life in a land far away.”
Leon takes over the plowing from Father in a demonstration of the mutual respect the sons in the family have for the patriarch. Meanwhile, Carlos emphasizes how Leon’s time in the army will help Carlos cope with troubled times later in his life. Although Carlos has just met Leon, he foreshadows the significant role Leon will play in shaping Carlos’s intellectual and emotional development over the course of the novel. Both of these points reinforce the key role that family plays throughout the story.
Themes
Beauty in Despair Theme Icon
Poverty Theme Icon
It is springtime on the Philippine island of Luzon when Leon returns home to the village. Immediately upon arrival he discards his khaki army uniform, dresses in his old clothes, and joins his family in working the land in hopes of harvesting a “good crop.” During this time, “radical social change” is sweeping across the Philippines. Following years of agitation for independence from Spanish colonial rule, powerful native leaders have gained control of the government and used their advantages in education and wealth to plunge the nation into “economic catastrophe” and stifle the movement for national unity.
Here, Bulosan once again emphasizes the intimate connection the peasantry has to the land: Leon immediately transitions from soldier to farmer upon his return home. Control of the land is also at the center of the sweeping social changes in the Philippines that threaten the autonomy of the peasantry.
Themes
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The culmination of the Spanish-American War has turned the Philippines into an American colony. The influence of American ideals such as “equality” inspires young people in the peasant provinces to rebel against the hacienderos, or landlords, who control vast plantations where the peasants toil in poverty and abject slavery.
The influx of American ideals like “equality” into Philippine society comes, somewhat ironically, alongside the growing power of the large landholders, who usurp more and more of the peasants’ lands. Bulosan discusses this struggle in order to introduce an important point that carries throughout the novel: poverty in not a “natural state.” Rather, poverty exists because the rich and powerful use their wealth and power to dominate the less powerful and keep them in a state of economic oppression.
Themes
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Poverty Theme Icon
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Carlos’s family controls a small, but productive, four hectares of land, on which they raise corn, rice, beans, and animals to ward off starvation. Shortly after his return home, Leon decides to marry a peasant girl from the province of Ilocos Sur. Father is overjoyed at Leon’s decision to get married, and the wedding is multi-day affair full of music, dancing, and lots of food and drink.
The land is so important to peasants like Carlos and his family in part because they risk starvation without it. This interdependence between the people and the land helps further explain why peasants across the Philippines stage seemingly futile revolts against the large landholders: the land is the core of the peasants’ survival. 
Themes
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Towards the end of the festivities, Leon takes part in a tradition wherein he carries his new bride into their house to find out if she is a virgin. In this “primitive custom” that has “come down to the peasants in the valleys from the hill people,” Leon must release black smoke from the chimney to publicly confirm his bride’s virginity. According to this “cruel custom,” brides who are not virgins must be released back to their villages and are forbidden from marrying again.
Much of Bulosan’s novel deals with the process of change, especially change that seeks to address injustice. By charactetizing the wedding custom as “primitive” and “cruel,” the author suggests that upholding tradition for tradition’s sake cannot justify the pain certain traditions cause.
Themes
Beauty in Despair Theme Icon
Poverty Theme Icon
When Leon and the wedding party learn that the new bride is not, in fact, a virgin, the party turns into a mob. The mob ties the girl to a guava tree, where the women spit on her and strip her of her clothes. The men then beat her with horsewhips while women and children fling sticks and rocks. An outraged Leon intervenes by “covering her bleeding body with his,” while Father throws himself on them both, pleading with the crowd to stop their assault on the “good, industrious woman.” Eventually, the crowd grows weary and dissipates. Carlos cuts the girl’s ties, and the crying, bleeding girl embraces Leon. Overwhelmed by the scene, Father searches for “an answer in the earth to the unanswerable question in [Leon’s] eyes.”
Although one of the novel’s major themes is finding beauty amidst despair, Leon’s wedding is an example of the opposite occurring. The wedding party’s savage attack on the bride turns what should be a beautiful occasion into a moment of tragic despair for Carlos’s family. That Father struggles to find a reasoning behind the madness he has just witnessed indicates that sometimes, tragedies defy easy explanations.
Themes
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Soon after the wedding, Leon sells his share of the family property and moves with his bride away from his village. Later, on his way to America, Carlos passes through Leon’s new town and waves to his brother and his wife and children. “It was good-bye to my brother Leon and to the war that he had fought in a strange land,” Carlos writes, as well as a “good-bye to his silent wife and all that was magnificent in her.” Carlos is never able to recall how many children Leon had at his side.
The relationship between Carlos and Leon symbolizes transition. Bulosan first introduces Leon as returning from the broader world and Carlos as the laboring peasant farmer. Eventually, however, the reverse occurs: Leon settles down to a traditional Filipino peasant’s lifestyle, while Carlos leaves for America.  
Themes
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