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Chapter 5
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’s sister Irene dies, setting off a series of tragedies for the family. One day during lunch, a young girl from Macario’s school comes to the house and waits for Macario to come back. Macario tells her to leave but she vows to stay at the house. Macario and the girl argue further and Macario threatens to throw her out, but she goes to the school principal, who tells Macario to marry the girl or else lose his job. Macario knows that marriage means he must cease making payments on the family land, so he instead tries, but fails, to get a civil service job. Meanwhile, Mother becomes pregnant again while Father grows more desperate and neglects his farming. Amado gets a job collecting traders’ tickets in the public market, and a copra (dried coconut kernel) company hires Carlos to climb coconut trees to cut nuts for other people.
Irene’s premature death kicks off a series of tragedies that threatens the family’s income and Carlos’s chance to go to school. This establishes a trend that carries throughout the remainder of Bulosan’s story: hope and tragedy go hand in hand, and every potential advancement comes with setbacks. Many of Carlos’s internal struggles from this point on involve him wrestling with the dualistic nature of existence, as he confronts the balances between hope and tragedy, beauty and despair, and kindness and cruelty.
Themes
Mother gives birth to another girl, Francisca, and on the day before the next land payment is due, Carlos falls from a coconut tree and breaks his leg and arm. Father takes Carlos to a witch doctor for treatment. The treatment helps Carlos and steadily his bones knit. While Carlos is healing, Macario reads him the story of Moses from the Old Testament, and likens him to José Rizal, the Filipino hero who resisted Spanish rule. “It filled me with wonder as he explained the significance of the great men who had died for their persecuted peoples centuries ago,” Carlos states. Macario then bids Carlos farewell and moves south to Mindanao, a Philippine island inhabited by Muslim descendants of conquering Moors.
This marks another moment in the novel when a significant book makes a lasting impression on Carlos’s life. Whereas Robinson Crusoe taught him the value of self-sufficiency, the biblical story of Exodus teaches him the importance of living for a higher ideal that can improve the lives of other people. The tale of Moses teaches Carlos about the important role leadership plays in bringing justice to oppressed groups of people.
Themes
That year, the new mayor of Binalonan fires all public employees, including Amado. The loss of work sends Amado to America, and Macario, who moves to Manila to escape the girl from school, also contemplates fleeing to the United States. Father understands that the family is unraveling, and there is no money left to make the land payments. Meanwhile, Carlos limps to school on his healing leg. The other students taunt him for his peasant origins, but he is too absorbed in books to care. He works hard in school, despite knowing that he will soon have to quit classes to go back to work for the family.
Books are one of the novel’s most potent symbols. While they have already played an important role in Carlos’s life, here Bulosan highlights that books also offer Carlos a genuine escape from suffering and poverty. Even as he recovers from a broken leg and endures the taunts of fellow students, Carlos knows that he must cherish his time in school and relish every chance he gets to read a book. The connection between books and recovery from injury is one Bulosan will revisit later in the story.
Themes
