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Chapter 20
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
Carlos works the cauliflower fields until the end of the picking season. Then he goes to Lompoc, where he finds his brother Amado and Alfredo have given up bootlegging in favor of a gambling partnership through which they cheat Filipino farmworkers. Carlos joins a crew of lettuce pickers and Amado borrows money from him to open a restaurant, but then Amado spends it on a dice game instead.
Amado’s involvement in crime already disturbed Carlos, but the fact that Amado is now cheating Filipino farmworkers embodies the way American society can turn members of oppressed groups against one another out of desperation. In addition, Carlos takes Amado’s gambling partnership as a personal slight. Because he is a farmworker himself, Carlos believes that his own brother is cheating him.
Themes
Carlos then begins washing dishes in a Filipino restaurant called the Opal Cafe, where he is shocked by the sexually indecent behavior of the schoolchildren who dine there. He also works in the café’s bakery department, where he witnesses many backroom transactions between corrupt men. When a drunken white businessman taunts Filipinos for their alleged criminality, Carlos angrily points out that white men control the various illegal rackets in town. This enrages the businessman, who attacks Carlos. When Carlos fights back, his boss fires him.
In Bulosan’s novel, children are not spared from the kinds of vices that plague Filipino adults. Already disgusted by public displays of promiscuous sex by adults, Carlos is horrified to see such behavior among schoolchildren. Witnessing such ugliness makes Carlos especially agitated and prone to the violent reaction that causes him to confront his racist boss and lose his job.
Themes
Losing yet another job in an unjust manner further angers Carlos. “You are fired! How many times did I hear these words […] across oceans and continents?” he fumes. Unable to control his emotions, he screams that he will “kill you, you white men!” He eventually flees into the alley. Shortly after he is fired from the café, Carlos receives a letter from his cousin, Panfilo, informing him that his father has died. The loss sends Carlos into a deep despair, and he refers to it as “the turning point of my life in America.” He nurtures his growing hatred for white people. Yet the hate isolates him from others, and he wonders if he will again feel the love “that could resuscitate beauty and goodness.”
News of his father’s death , though tragic, gives Carlos a chance to examine his own rage towards white men and come to terms with his newfound callousness towards death. Though he just recently threatened to commit murder himself, his father’s death brings the emotional reality of death back to the front of his mind. Because he loved his father, he wonders how he can nurture such hatred while still holding onto the love that the memory of his father brings.
Themes
Carlos soon meets another Filipino who calls himself Max Smith. Max entices Carlos to join him in a series of armed robberies. They discuss robbing a bank, but then one night Max takes Carlos to the home of his wife. He runs into the home and shoots his wife’s white lover, and then he gives Carlos some money and urges him to run. Carlos boards a train for New Mexico.
Following his father’s death, a devastated Carlos lets his worst instincts overtake him by agreeing to work with Max. When Max murders his wife’s lover, however, the act shocks Carlos back to his senses, and he abandons his short-lived life of crime. The love of his family still guides Carlos, even during one of the darkest times of his life.
Themes
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