Political objectivity and reader interpretation in The Tortilla Curtain

Tortilla Curtain

Because Boyle has written a fable -- a fiction -- and not an investigative report on immigration and classism, he was able to sympathetically present both Candido Rincon and Delaney Mossbacher, striped to their naked souls. Neither man is favored in the narrative, though readers are likely to form an alliance -- most likely emerging from their political leanings -- early in the book.

A collision of culture and values. Out of the gate, the reader is treated to Delaney's self-absorption: "To his shame, Delaney's first thought was for the car (was it marred, scratched, dented?), and then for his insurance rates (what was this going to do to his good-driver discount?), and finally, belatedly, for the victim….he'd injured, possibly killed another human being. It wasn't his fault, god knew -- the man was obviously insane, demented, suicidal, no jury would convict him -- but there it was, all the same" (p.14). The dust has just barely settled on the collision between man and car when Delaney lets his wondering about the injured man ripen to full outrage that the man was likely living in Topanga canyon -- hiding, camping, littering, loitering.

When the reader catches up to Candido, he is struggling to get to his encampment: "It hurt. Every step of the way. But he thought of the penitents at Chalma, crawling a mile and half on their knees, crawling till bone showed through the flesh, and he went on" (p. 26).

The survivors. Emergency preparedness is a luxury reserved for those with the leisure to plan and the resources to enact their plan -- both conditions are foreign to the Rincon family. In part three, vectors -- natural and manmade -- bear down on Candido and America with raw power. As they blindly try to outrun the destruction they have unwittingly wrought, survival is the only language with any currency. Through all his suffering in Mexico, he was never as afraid and desperate as during the hour when he tries to cobble together a shelter for his wife and newborn daughter on the perimeter of the destructive conflagration: "In a heartbeat he was up over the top and scrambling along the outside of the wall, hunched low over his feet, angry suddenly, raging, darting on past the plastic sheeting until he found the dog's dishes and the scrap of carpet and tucked them under his arm -- and fuck the dog, he hated that dog, and fuck the fat lady who owned him, too; they could buy another dish, another carpet, and who cared if a poor unlucky man and his wife and daughter died of want right under their noses? He wasn't going to worry about it any more. He wasn't going to ask -- he was just going to take" (p. 292). The reader is at once impaled by Candido's desperation and aligned with his strife-impelled stealing.