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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in America Is in the Heart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Beauty in Despair
Race and American Identity
Education vs. Ignorance
Poverty
Summary
Analysis
Having witnessed so many “heart-breaking tragedies” in America, Carlos feels he is unable “to interpret them objectively.” He worries that he is being swept up into a world of violence and pain because he is a part of that world. He likens this violence and cruelty to a “slow decay” that is devouring him “like cancer.” Seeking new work, he again finds himself in Seattle.
Carlos’s greatest challenge in the novel is finding a way to appreciate and cultivate beauty in the midst of societies that cause him endless despair. He does not want to respond to the violence and cruelty around him by becoming violent and cruel himself. Yet the prevalence of such despair in his everyday life makes not succumbing to the despair a monumental challenge.
Themes
Carlos stays in a hotel, steals the sheets, and sells them the next day. It is his first dishonest act in America, but he does not feel guilty. He works as a sign-carrier and a dishwasher in both Washington and Oregon. At a bus station where he is working, another Filipino gives him a ticket for a soup kitchen near Portland’s Chinatown, where he also finds a shelter to sleep in.
The stress of being surrounded by cruelty finally forces Carlos to commit a crime, which he once disparaged Amado for doing. Unlike Amado, however, Carlos never relies on crime as a primary source of income.
Themes
In the shelter, Carlos is surrounded by “lost men,” who terrify him. One night, he narrowly avoids being raped, which causes him to run off to the freight yards. On the ride to Eugene, he is inspired by the beauty of the night sky and the fragrant smell of the lush surroundings. “I knew that heaven could not be far from the earth,” he reasons.
Once again, Bulosan follows a moment of horrendous despair with a moment of quiet beauty. After witnessing several incidents of sexual assault against others, Carlos is nearly assaulted himself. Yet, in a testament to Carlos’s firm desire to still appreciate the positive sides of things, he manages to bask in the beauty of the sky and countryside.
Themes
In Klamath Falls, Washington, Carlos stops to eat at a restaurant, where two policemen confront him and demand to know if he is Filipino. Soon, the policemen assault Carlos and beat him unconscious. He wakes up later to find himself sore and bleeding in a jail cell. The two drunk policemen drag him from the cell and dump him at the California border, where they beat him further. Carlos puzzles over the “sadistic” joy the police take in brutalizing him.
As representatives of American justice, police officers like the ones in this scene serve as broader symbols of how structural racism targets Filipinos in American society. Not only can Carlos not go to the police to protest the injustice he experiences, but the police themselves also visit this injustice on Carlos.
Themes
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Carlos takes a freight train to San Francisco, where he hangs around the gambling houses begging for money. He meets a Filipino named Cortez and eventually joins his work crew picking cauliflower. In the work crew’s bunkhouse, Carlos is horrified when the other workers force him to engage in sex with a Mexican prostitute. Carlos escapes the camp in shame.
Carlos’s experience with the prostitute and the cauliflower pickers again demonstrates how racism and social disenfranchisement encourage vice and degrade the act of sex among oppressed populations like the Filipinos described here.
Themes
