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93. Check-In
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in With the Fire on High, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age and Teen Parenthood
Creativity vs. Professional Norms
Food and Connection
Caregiving, Independence, and Identity
Support, Community, and Mentorship
Summary
Analysis
Emoni is entranced by the Catedral de Sevilla, which is covered in gold and silver. There’s a coffin in the middle, held up by four metal figures in crowns and armor. Emoni listens to the tour guide say that this is Christopher Columbus’s tomb; places all over the world have parts of his body so they can say they’re his final resting place. Malachi asks Emoni if she’s okay. She leads him away and says she might not be. “Boricua,” she explains, refers to the Borinken people who lived in Puerto Rico before Columbus arrived. According to Julio, the word meant “Land of the brave and noble lords.” Emoni gestures to the gold, which she notes likely came from Puerto Rico. Nobody remembers the enslaved people who dug up the gold. Their descendants are still in Puerto Rico. The cathedral suddenly looks less beautiful to Emoni.
Suddenly, Emoni’s feelings about Spain become complicated when she realizes she’s looking at Christopher Columbus’s tomb. Columbus’s cruelty toward native peoples in the Caribbean is well documented, and he’s often credited with beginning the colonialism movement that ultimately wiped-out native populations in the Caribbean and in the Americas. So, it’s wildly uncomfortable to see such a person entombed in gold mined by enslaved people—with absolutely no acknowledgement of the terrible things Columbus did.
Themes
