Nick Character Analysis in America Is in the Heart

Nick is José’s brother and a member of Carlos’s group in America who works in the union movement. Carlos meets him in Macario’s Los Angeles hotel, where he is staying with the other group members and is unemployed. Nick displays a cynical nature about life in American society. He is not above finding illegal ways to survive, as in one instance when he brazenly swipes a woman’s purse after she drops it. He founds a short-live socialist literary magazine with Macario, José, and Felix, and becomes active in the union movement on the West Coast. Like the other members of Carlos’s group, Nick also works a series of menial jobs, including one in a nightclub, and he attempts to go to Spain to fight Franco’s fascist forces only to have his Visa denied. Eventually, he becomes secretary-treasurer of the local UCAPAWA in Portland until reactionary elements oust him from the position, but he never stops trying to organize cannery workers.

Nick Character Timeline in America Is in the Heart

The timeline below shows where the character Nick appears in America Is in the Heart. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Among Macario’s many roommates are a pair of brothers, Nick and curly-haired José, who had to drop out of college when the Depression hit. Mariano,... (full context)

Following Leon’s death, Nick, Nick’s girlfriend Rolla, Macario, and Carlos move to a new apartment on the ironically named... (full context)

...Carlos goes to Los Angeles. There, he finds that his brother Macario and José’s brother Nick have started a literary magazine with Felix Razon, the former Filipino peasant boy whom Carlos... (full context)

...of The New Tide magazine, but the magazine soon folds despite a valiant effort from Nick and Felix to save it. (full context)

...out a plan. Felix goes to the Imperial Valley to promote the labor cause, while Nick and Macario work with urban workers in Los Angeles. Conrado Torres, Carlos’s former cannery worker... (full context)

...often to read poems to Carlos, and she eventually reveals that she is pregnant with Nick’s child and is going back to the Soviet Union, where she was born. She soon... (full context)

...going to Spain to fight the fascist regime of Francisco Franco, and that Macario and Nick are going with him. (full context)

When summer rolls around, Macario returns and tells Carlos that he and Nick could not get visas to go to Spain, but Felix did get there and is... (full context)

...strange way we were together again,” he writes. Carlos then goes to Portland and contacts Nick at the local UCAPAWA office. Nick tells him the union is dead. Soon thereafter, Carlos... (full context)

Nick attempts to help Carlos bear the “black frustration” that defines his life by sharing a... (full context)

Nick’s enemies in the union fire him from his role as secretary-treasurer. He goes to Alaska,... (full context)