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Chapter 21
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
The beauty of Santa Fe, New Mexico, entrances Carlos, but he feels lonely there. He soon receives a letter from Amado, who is in jail for robbery in Santa Barbara. Hoping to aid his brother, Carlos goes back to California. He hires a lawyer to take Amado’s case, but the lawyer fails to get Amado released. When Amado is finally released, he takes a job as a cook while Carlos works for a milk company.
Carlos becomes hopeful after Amado attempts to transition away from crime and back into a legitimate occupation. The connection between the brothers here shows again how invaluable family can be, especially in desperate circumstances.
Themes
The work for the milk company, however, is unfulfilling, and Carlos laments: “I was merely living from day to day: yesterday seemed long ago and tomorrow was too far away.” Meanwhile, Amado buys a restaurant and leases the upper floor as a hotel. The business initially prospers, but it soon attracts Amado’s old friends, who take up all the space and eventually force Amado to close the establishment. The milk company also fires Carlos around this time.
A sense of rootlessness and a lack of security characterize Carlos’s time in America. The life of an itinerant laborer involves merely surviving from day to day and makes planning for the future virtually impossible. Even though both brothers try to earn money through legitimate avenues, their efforts are thwarted yet again, showing just how tempting it might be to rely on crime as Amado as done in the past.
Themes
An unemployed Carlos retreats to the gambling houses, where he runs into Alfredo, who shows off a large wad of money and tells Carlos that America is about “survival of the fittest.” Alfredo disappears not long after. Carlos then works a series of jobs picking flowers and washing dishes. One day he visits a grocery store and chats with a clerk named Judith. Her beauty draws Carlos in, and she reads him a story from a book. Later, when the restaurant where Carlos works refuses to serve a Filipino man and a white woman, he attacks the headwaiter and is summarily fired. He says goodbye to Judith and once again searches for work.
Carlos’s time spent with Judith marks the first time he interacts significantly with an American woman since his work with Mary Strandon in the Philippines. Like Mary, Judith represents (however briefly) a nurturing, motherly figure who introduces Carlos to more books and helps rekindle his passion for learning. Judith’s nurturing love contrasts strikingly with Alfredo and his embrace of a decidedly harsh “survival of the fittest” approach to life.
Themes
