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Chapter 45
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 finds work in the Los Angeles fish canneries and writes in his spare time and for Ganzo’s newspaper. Later, while attending a meeting of cannery workers from different backgrounds at Nick’s house, Carlos once again gets inspired by a “common faith in the working man.” While visiting Macario, Carlos realizes that this new group of cannery workers has the potential to revive the union movement.
Carlos moves to the town of Nipomo to pick peas, where starts a school for the other pea-pickers. He teaches the workers about American history, democracy, and the bible. He then carries his lessons to other workers in other small towns. Carlos finds strength through teaching. “This was what I had been looking for in America!” he writes, “to make my own kind understand this vast land from our own experiences.”
Carlos’s dedication to teaching other minority workers about the history of the labor movement is the logical fulfillment of his years spent educating himself. Whereas organizing for the union movement gave him the chance to introduce others to the potential of unions, teaching gives him the opportunity to improve other peoples’ lives directly by helping them find their own places in American society.
Themes
Following the end of his travels as a teacher, Carlos learns that José is teaching about unions in Monterey and goes to visit him. Suddenly, people begin to enter José’s house, including Filipinos, Mexicans, and Chinese people. Carlos recalls Macario’s words that America was “in the hearts of men.”
The assortment of different workers whom Carlos encounters at José’s house symbolizes the potential fulfilment of the America ideal of equality for all people.
Themes
