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George Shearer
Rudy is Henry’s younger brother. Eager to be like Henry, Rudy is sometimes overzealous and hotheaded. For example, after drinking too much at a party, he picks a fight with Rafas, the leader of the Downey Gang (the 38th Street Gang’s rivals). Thankfully, Henry is always willing to stick up for his younger brother. Even though Rudy was at the Sleepy Lagoon with everyone else on the night that José Williams was murdered there, he somehow evaded the police’s scrutiny, and Henry makes his fellow gang members vow not to say anything about this discrepancy. While Henry and the others are wrongly imprisoned for the murder, Rudy wears Henry’s zoot suit to a dance hall and gets swept up in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. Like El Pachuco, he finds himself facing a group of angry white servicemen who ultimately beat him and strip him naked. Shortly after this altercation, Rudy joins the Navy and goes to fight in World War II, returning only for Henry’s release from prison.
Rudy Quotes in Zoot Suit
The Zoot Suit quotes below are all either spoken by Rudy or refer to Rudy. 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:
).
Act 2, Scene 6: Zoot Suit Riots
Quotes
PRESS: Henry Reyna went back to prison in 1947 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. While incarcerated, he killed another inmate and he wasn’t released until 1955, when he got into hard drugs. He died of the trauma of his life in 1972.
PACHUCO: That’s the way you see it, ese. But there’s other way[s] to end this story.
RUDY: Henry Reyna went to Korea in 1950. He was shipped across in a destroyer and defended the 38th Parallel until he was killed at Inchon in 1952, being posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
ALICE: Henry Reyna married Della in 1948 and they have five kids, three of them now going to the University, speaking calo and calling themselves Chicanos.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Zoot Suit LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rudy Quotes in Zoot Suit
The Zoot Suit quotes below are all either spoken by Rudy or refer to Rudy. 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:
).
Act 2, Scene 6: Zoot Suit Riots
Quotes
PRESS: Henry Reyna went back to prison in 1947 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. While incarcerated, he killed another inmate and he wasn’t released until 1955, when he got into hard drugs. He died of the trauma of his life in 1972.
PACHUCO: That’s the way you see it, ese. But there’s other way[s] to end this story.
RUDY: Henry Reyna went to Korea in 1950. He was shipped across in a destroyer and defended the 38th Parallel until he was killed at Inchon in 1952, being posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
ALICE: Henry Reyna married Della in 1948 and they have five kids, three of them now going to the University, speaking calo and calling themselves Chicanos.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
