The Nurse Character Analysis

Even the many things on the nurse’s desk implied fakery; the pictures of her smiling boys (Who did they think they were, smiling so boldly at the camera?), the porcelain statue of a calico kitten with a little stethoscope, wearing a folded white cap with a red cross between its too cute perky little ears…

The clinic visit is the family’s only interaction with middle-class America in the book; the nurse is the only character who isn’t a laborer, and the clinic is one of the few real buildings that the family enters. In this context, Petra’s unease represents her total alienation from that society; the fact that ordinary accessories of middle-class life, like desk ornaments and grinning photos, are so upsetting to her emphasizes the extent to which she lives outside this society. However, it’s important that rather than accepting her exclusion, Petra pushes back. The reality of field work is often erased and ignored by the larger society, but Petra insists that her grim reality is just as important – even more real – than this seemingly normal scene. Even though this moment underlines her poverty, it’s also an important reclamation of her own narrative.

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— The clinic visit is fifteen dollars, but I’ll charge you only ten because…she paused and glanced at Estrella, then added, because I know times are hard these days. She removed her black patent leather purse from the bottom drawer and placed it on the desk beside the phone. Estrella stared at the nurse an extra second. How easily she put herself in a position to judge.

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The oil was made from their bones, and it was their bones that kept the nurse’s car from not halting on some highway, kept her on her way to Daisyfield to pick up her boys at six. It was their bones that kept the air conditioning in the cars humming, that kept them moving on the long dotted line on the map.

In this passage, Estrella is standing outside the clinic, wondering what to do next. Despite the nurse’s “generosity” in undercharging them, the fee has completely eaten up their limited funds, and they have no money to take Alejo to the hospital or get home. Interacting with the nurse has also made Estrella feel needy and indebted, but when she reframes the issue in terms of the contributions to society that she and her family have made their entire lives, it seems that it’s really the nurse (and the middle-class society she represents) who is indebted to Estrella. Here, Estrella emphatically acknowledges the value of her own work while realizing that her society will not voluntarily do the same; this is thus a moment of profound empowerment and disillusion. In a few minutes Estrella will use violence to make the nurse acknowledge her, ending her dream of achieving recognition and agency in society through meaningful and “legitimate” labor.

10100

She did not feel like herself holding the money. She felt like two Estrellas. One was a silent phantom who obediently marked a circle with a stick around the bungalow as the mother had requested, while the other held the crowbar and the money.

After the disastrous clinic visit, Estrella stands in the parking lot wondering what to do next. Throughout the visit Perfecto and Petra have become more and more passive, and their complete absence from her deliberations now shows that she’s truly become the head of the family. Ultimately she threatens the nurse with Perfecto’s crowbar in order to get the money back, taking responsibility for her family even when she has to act in ways she finds morally distasteful. This moment is perhaps the most representative of Estrella’s coming of age, but it presents that process not as a positive development of adult character but a traumatic fracturing of identity. In order to care for her family, Estrella has to sacrifice her sense of her own goodness. This passage builds off earlier moments in which Estrella remarks that caring for her family erodes her sense of self – for example, when she envisioned herself sinking into the tar pits while digging the car out of the mud. Ultimately, it completes the novel’s argument that labor conditions and social exclusion warp the process of growing up for many Latino young people, rendering it an experience of profound loss.

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Even the many things on the nurse’s desk implied fakery; the pictures of her smiling boys (Who did they think they were, smiling so boldly at the camera?), the porcelain statue of a calico kitten with a little stethoscope, wearing a folded white cap with a red cross between its too cute perky little ears…

The clinic visit is the family’s only interaction with middle-class America in the book; the nurse is the only character who isn’t a laborer, and the clinic is one of the few real buildings that the family enters. In this context, Petra’s unease represents her total alienation from that society; the fact that ordinary accessories of middle-class life, like desk ornaments and grinning photos, are so upsetting to her emphasizes the extent to which she lives outside this society. However, it’s important that rather than accepting her exclusion, Petra pushes back. The reality of field work is often erased and ignored by the larger society, but Petra insists that her grim reality is just as important – even more real – than this seemingly normal scene. Even though this moment underlines her poverty, it’s also an important reclamation of her own narrative.

10100

— The clinic visit is fifteen dollars, but I’ll charge you only ten because…she paused and glanced at Estrella, then added, because I know times are hard these days. She removed her black patent leather purse from the bottom drawer and placed it on the desk beside the phone. Estrella stared at the nurse an extra second. How easily she put herself in a position to judge.

10100

The oil was made from their bones, and it was their bones that kept the nurse’s car from not halting on some highway, kept her on her way to Daisyfield to pick up her boys at six. It was their bones that kept the air conditioning in the cars humming, that kept them moving on the long dotted line on the map.

In this passage, Estrella is standing outside the clinic, wondering what to do next. Despite the nurse’s “generosity” in undercharging them, the fee has completely eaten up their limited funds, and they have no money to take Alejo to the hospital or get home. Interacting with the nurse has also made Estrella feel needy and indebted, but when she reframes the issue in terms of the contributions to society that she and her family have made their entire lives, it seems that it’s really the nurse (and the middle-class society she represents) who is indebted to Estrella. Here, Estrella emphatically acknowledges the value of her own work while realizing that her society will not voluntarily do the same; this is thus a moment of profound empowerment and disillusion. In a few minutes Estrella will use violence to make the nurse acknowledge her, ending her dream of achieving recognition and agency in society through meaningful and “legitimate” labor.

10100

She did not feel like herself holding the money. She felt like two Estrellas. One was a silent phantom who obediently marked a circle with a stick around the bungalow as the mother had requested, while the other held the crowbar and the money.

After the disastrous clinic visit, Estrella stands in the parking lot wondering what to do next. Throughout the visit Perfecto and Petra have become more and more passive, and their complete absence from her deliberations now shows that she’s truly become the head of the family. Ultimately she threatens the nurse with Perfecto’s crowbar in order to get the money back, taking responsibility for her family even when she has to act in ways she finds morally distasteful. This moment is perhaps the most representative of Estrella’s coming of age, but it presents that process not as a positive development of adult character but a traumatic fracturing of identity. In order to care for her family, Estrella has to sacrifice her sense of her own goodness. This passage builds off earlier moments in which Estrella remarks that caring for her family erodes her sense of self – for example, when she envisioned herself sinking into the tar pits while digging the car out of the mud. Ultimately, it completes the novel’s argument that labor conditions and social exclusion warp the process of growing up for many Latino young people, rendering it an experience of profound loss.

10010