Previous
Chapter 3
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 states that his father’s loss of the church land marks the beginning of his own “conscious life,” the moment when he “[becomes] sensitive in the presence of poverty and degradation.” This change later inspires Carlos to find strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The loss of the land reduces Father to the humiliating status of a hired laborer. When Carlos’s maternal grandmother dies, she leaves a small piece of land, but the soil is too poor and rocky to cultivate, despite Father’s and Carlos’s best efforts. This point marks the end of Carlos’s childhood, and Father urges him to move to town with Mother and attend school. Father stays behind, determined to try and farm alone.
Poverty and the despair that it breeds colors every aspect of Carlos’s young life in the Philippines. Here, Bulosan articulates why poverty is so sinister: it is not just an economic state; it is also a psychological condition, and those afflicted by this condition can never truly escape its influence. As poverty breaks up his family and threatens his own future, Carlos recognizes that poverty will always color the lens through which he views the world.
Themes
When Carlos arrives in Binalonan, he gets a job on the construction crew building the new overland highway. He works mostly nights until one night the nearby river sweeps him up. Three of his fellow workers rescue him, and afterwards he collects his salary and gives it to the moneylender. It is the first payment on the family land. Later, Macario brings Carlos a copy of Robinson Crusoe. Carlos enjoys the book and Macario tells him to take inspiration from Crusoe’s struggles. “Someday you may be left alone somewhere in the world and you will have to depend on your own ingenuity,” Macario states. Carlos says this moment marks “the beginning of [his] intellectual life with Macario.”
Carlos’s job in Binalonan foreshadows his later struggles as an itinerant laborer in America. Working on the highway is dangerous and the pay is low, conditions that will also define his work in the United States. Bulosan provides additional foreshowing by mentioning Robinson Crusoe, a character who, like Carlos, must rely on his own efforts and ingenuity to survive alone in a strange land.
Themes
After recovering from his injuries building the highway, Carlos begins helping Mother with her trading business. Each morning, they wake up and fill an earthen jar with boggoong, or salted fish. They then peddle the fish to peasants in the villages in exchange for rice and beans. Mother often gives fish to peasants who have nothing to trade, and this alerts Carlos to her generous nature. The walk between villages is dangerous.
Just as Carlos learns faith in humanity from his father, his mother teaches him the value of compassion by giving generously to the other peasants, even though she desperately needs money herself.
Themes
One day, while crossing a river, Mother slips and drops a decorative drinking jar she acquired at market. Later, in another village, a peasant woman has nothing to barter for salted fish, so Mother allows her to dip her hands into the fish. The woman then washes her hands in a bowl of water and drinks the water. Carlos finds the scene humorous, but Mother tells him that he will someday understand what such poverty does to people.
This moment highlights the extreme lengths that poor people will go to ameliorate their condition. Carlos finds humor in the peasant woman’s sad attempt to draw nutrients from salted water, not realizing how desperate she must be to do such a thing. He will later witness similar desperation from a poor Mexican child, and at that later time he will react not by laughing, but by crying.
Themes
Get the entire America Is in the Heart LitChart as a printable PDF.
