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Luis
One of Bourgois’s most important confidants in El Barrio, aside Primo, who is Caesar’s best friend and employer. A violent and unstable crack addict, Caesar nevertheless ends up working at the Game Room when Primo needs a new lookout. He tends to spend his wages on intense crack binges, but otherwise, he usually shows up for work. When high, he tends to go on lengthy rants about topics ranging from his hatred for Ray and African Americans to his love for crack and pride in being irresponsible and “hassling customers.” Primo continually tinkers with Caesar’s pay—when, how much, and whether in crack or cash—in an attempt to control him, but this never quite works. Like Primo, Caesar has difficulty finding legal work—not only does he also lack the necessary cultural capital, but he also remains addicted to crack. He tells Bourgois about suffering abuse when growing up alongside his cousin Eddie, especially at the hands of his grandmother, which led him to in turn violently attack animals, his teachers, and other students, as well as rape girls at school. In adulthood, he continues to take pride in the violence he commits, even though he recognizes its horrible toll: his own sister was murdered, and he sometimes has emotional breakdowns when he remembers this fact. Although he is dating and has children with Carmen, he sleeps with as many women as possible. By the end of the book, he has quit dealing drugs—but still uses them—and continues to live with Carmen and her children, whom he abuses badly.
Caesar Quotes in In Search of Respect
The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Caesar or refer to Caesar. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
It almost appears as if Caesar, Primo, and Willie were caught in a time warp during their teenage years. Their macho-proletarian dream of working an eight-hour shift plus overtime throughout their adult lives at a rugged slot in a unionized shop has been replaced by the nightmare of poorly paid, highly feminized, office-support service work. The stable factory-worker incomes that might have allowed Caesar and Primo to support families have largely disappeared from the inner city. Perhaps if their social network had not been confined to the weakest sector of manufacturing in a period of rapid job loss, their teenage working-class dreams might have stabilized them for long enough to enable them to adapt to the restructuring of the local economy. Instead, they find themselves propelled headlong into an explosive confrontation between their sense of cultural dignity versus the humiliating interpersonal subordination of service work.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire In Search of Respect LitChart as a printable PDF.
Caesar Quotes in In Search of Respect
The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Caesar or refer to Caesar. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
It almost appears as if Caesar, Primo, and Willie were caught in a time warp during their teenage years. Their macho-proletarian dream of working an eight-hour shift plus overtime throughout their adult lives at a rugged slot in a unionized shop has been replaced by the nightmare of poorly paid, highly feminized, office-support service work. The stable factory-worker incomes that might have allowed Caesar and Primo to support families have largely disappeared from the inner city. Perhaps if their social network had not been confined to the weakest sector of manufacturing in a period of rapid job loss, their teenage working-class dreams might have stabilized them for long enough to enable them to adapt to the restructuring of the local economy. Instead, they find themselves propelled headlong into an explosive confrontation between their sense of cultural dignity versus the humiliating interpersonal subordination of service work.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
