Book review framework and critical analysis methods

Tortilla Curtain - by T.Coraghessan Boyle

The much-talked-about "American Dream" - that elusive dream of being able to own a house, raising educated and successful kids, earning middle class money, and most of all being accepted as a functioning part of the great diverse U.S. economic and social structure - is but an "American Myth" to many immigrants arriving in this country. It's certainly a myth for many thousands of Mexicans coming to the U.S. And attempting to carve out a better life for themselves. The Boyle novel offers readers a close-up, graphically realistic view of the hardships that confront those immigrants - juxtaposed with the "good life" of an affluent family living behind stylish walls.

This review of The Tortilla Curtain will compare and contrast the main characters in the novel - Delaney Mossbacker (and his wife Kyra) and Candido Rincon (and his wife America) - in order to come to a greater understanding of the issues mentioned in the first paragraph. The report will also incorporate the view of writers and critics and scholars (culling views and excerpts from academic journals) as to the big picture of Chicano labor history and the deeper meaning behind Boyle's literary effort.

What are Boyle's Motives and Views on the Issues he writes about?

While the novel clearly seems to paint an empathetic picture of the horrors of being a Mexican immigrant in America, it is pertinent to note that the author's personal views on the clash between illegal immigrants and affluent American citizens in the Southern California scene seem to be anything but empathetic. In fact, Boyle's views appear to coincide with those of the right wing - e.g., very anti-immigrant. Is it important to know an author's personal feelings about extremely emotional issues he confronts and writes about regarding key human interaction dramas in America? The answer is yes, if one is truly searching for meaning, value, and truth in one's studies.

With that in mind, according to an in-depth research paper (published in Studies in Contemporary Fiction) on Boyle's novel (Hicks 2003), the author Boyle was interviewed (prior to completion of the novel) as to his opinions on California's Proposition 187, which was approved by voters in 1994.

The passing of Prop. 187 (Mailman 1995) made immigrants "a much maligned species" and was "an effort to drive out undocumented aliens and to deter their entry by cutting them off from medical and other public services." According to the New York Law Journal article by Mailman, Prop. 187 also cut off illegal immigrant children from attending schools in California, and when you deny education to a cultural group arriving in the U.S. As immigrants, you effectively are keeping them from raising their standard of living; in fact, you are keeping them "down" in the trenches of manual labor.]

When asked about Prop. 187 (Hicks 2003), Boyle opined that denying education to illegals is not a good idea because "...We don't want to make an underclass of untouchables and so on." But as to cutting off health and human services to illegals, and "rounding up people who are illegal aliens" - that is "good," Boyle stated. "It's the first step toward getting control over the borders," he continued in the interview. Allowing police and INS to "deport people" is a good idea, Boyle asserted, and "once deported, you should be fingerprinted and if caught again, you should be put in prison with hard labor."

Boyle added, "Not that I have anything against anybody, it's just that you have to have some determination in a free society as to who belongs and in it and who doesn't."

The Character Candido Rincon (contrasted with Delaney)

It doesn't take long for the author to paint the picture that many affluent Southern Californians - and indeed, many affluent Americans from coast to coast - have of illegal aliens. When readers first open the book, Delaney's car has hit Candido, "a frail scrambling hunched-over...dark little man with a wild look in his eye" (3). Candido had "red-flecked eyes" and "rotten teeth," and he had been "crouching in the bushes like some feral thing, like a stray dog or bird-mauling cat..." (4).

Delaney's first reactions, upon realizing he has hit another human, is that Candido must be "obviously insane, demented, [or] suicidal." And Delaney worried immediately about his insurance rates going up (which is editorially in screaming contrast with the fact that there is an injured human out there) and worries too about the damage to his car. And once Delaney did attempt to locate the injured Candido in the bushes (6), he finds "a shopping cart, pocked with rust," which to any alert observer of American life indicates a sad homeless person's plight. It also suggests a homeless person's lifestyle, and many Americans believe that homeless people have chosen that lifestyle, not been thrust into it.

We see in these initial descriptions that Candido is perceived as an animal, something akin to a wild creature, not a human. These descriptions set the tone, in terms of foreshadowing, for the rest of the story. Candido was a "jack-in-the-box" (7) - which of course is not only a toy, but a chain of fast-food restaurants - Boyle writes, and appeared as "loose-jointed as a doll flung in a corner by an imperious little girl." Worse yet, by getting in Delaney's way, Candido had "ruined [Delaney's] afternoon." Candido was nothing more than a "...sad bundle of bone and gristle" who had been "launched...over the side of the canyon like a Ping-Pong ball shot out of a cannon."

As to Candido's view of what happened, readers learn (16) that he "felt as if a bomb had gone off in his head," the kind of bomb that the Americans "dropped on the Japanese." Here, Boyle cleverly connects the fact that Delaney's automobile was a Japanese car (a freshly waxed Acura), and Candido, to complete the paradox, feels like a victim of America's atomic attack of lethal radiation on two great cities in the nation of Japan.

Does the author bring these images into the novel to suggest, subtly, that because the U.S. blew Japan away once but now Americans have a love affair with Japanese autos, hence, because Americans now hate illegal Mexicans, one day they will embrace the Mexican contribution to the U.S. economy - or Mexicans themselves as a culture of worthy people? That might be a stretch, but when studying novels by outstanding authors, one needs to be open to all literary brushstrokes.]

And as to Candido's injuries - "the flesh was still and crusted, as if an old board had been nailed to his head" - Boyle seems to suggest Candido was figuratively crucified like a kind of alien Christ on a cross. And readers of course realize what would have happened if the characters in the accident had been reversed: Delaney would have been rushed to the hospital in a cutting edge emergency vehicle, after having been attended to on the spot by highly-trained, well-paid paramedics - and would receive the finest medical care in the world, thanks to his HMO with Kaiser, or some other health care corporate entity.

But, as Boyle suggests through descriptive narrative (17), none of that kind of emergency care will be offered to the illegal Candido. Rather, he will avoid being ravaged by the "vultures scrawling their ragged signatures in the sky" because "America would help him" by brewing "some tea from manzanita berries." That will "combat the pain," meanwhile, America will also "bathe his wounds" and "cluck her tongue and fuss over him."

True to his humble status on the planet, Candido does not immediately feel like a martyr, but rather he thinks of those who were worse off than he, like "the penitents at Chalma, crawling a mile and a half on their knees, crawling till bone showed through the flesh..."

Boyle has a knack in this novel of connecting and restating images, to help color the characters and create the tone he needs to keep the story dramatic and compelling. On page 10, Delaney believes Candido has "vanished around the bend" while time seemed a "tattered fabric of used and borrowed moments." Then on page 20, Candido is lying beside the fire that his 17-year-old pregnant wife has built to keep him warm, and he is "dreaming with his eyes open" of the day in his childhood when his father hit an opossum with a stick. "The opossum collapsed like a sack of cloth," Boyle writes, "and it lay there, white in the face and with the naked feet and tail of a giant rat, stunned and twitching." So we have "tattered fabric" and "a sack of cloth" - and moreover, when Candido revives the memory of that "stunned and twitching" opossum, "that is how [Candido] felt now, just like that opossum."

Again, the author connects the fact that not only does Candido feel like an animal, his culture of interlopers into the rich U.S. territory are treated like animals. In fact, even if he did go to a doctor - which he couldn't afford in any event - "the man from La Migra - the Immigration - would be standing there with his twenty questions and his clipboard."

Another repeated image Boyle uses to paint pictures for the reader is the image of a cat. Right at the beginning of the novel (4), Delaney believes he hit something with the crudeness of a "bird-mauling cat." And on page 25, America gets up early and tries to leave their crude campsite, and "she was silent as a cat."

But Boyle's descriptive narrative in terms of his character development of Candido dips even below the animal species. First Boyle turns to vegetable species (24), in discussing the "crushed" left cheekbone, which was "staved in like the flesh of a rotting pumpkin." Then, secondly, Boyle sees Candido's beat-up face as looking like "one of those monsters that crawl out of moonlit graves in the movies." But, hey, "who cared how ugly he was al long as he can work?" Boyle offers, and of course, that is why Mexicans come to the U.S., for work (as part of the American Dream), not to look good.

The Character Delaney Mossbacker (contrasted with Candido)

While poverty-laden America and Candido are toughing it out in the brutally unwelcoming canyon environments (notably Topanga Canyon) around Los Angeles, Delaney Mossbacker, an affluent writer, is penning his monthly column for a magazine called Wide Open Spaces. And ironically, Delaney has been writing about the "flora and fauna of Topanga Canyon" (32).

To Candido (49) that very canyon, with its "little clearing by the stream," its "leaves" and "rocks" all seemed "unchanging, eternal, as dead as a photograph." And, living there in the canyon, Candido saw it as "a jail cell and he was a prisoner, incarcerated in his thoughts." In fact, Boyle continues, at least prisoners had an opportunity to read something, listen to a radio, a place to sit and "take a contemplative crap" - while for Candido, his prison was unchanging, and all he did was doze, wake up, and sleep again. There were no license plates to make, or rocks to break. Just a sun that was always "in the same place in the sky" (50).

Some of the juxtapositions of images and of characters in this novel are so obvious, they almost come across as didactic and a smidgen preachy, but nonetheless they are - in the main - appropriate and effective. For example, the things that depress Delaney are issues like the loss of habitat for the Florida manatee, the spotted owl, the panda and pine marten, and the "steady and relentless degradation of the environment" in general. "There were days when he worked himself into such a state he could barely lift his fingers to the keys..."

How ironic that Delaney can barely lift his rich fingers, and that Candido, who seems to avoid being depressed, even when struck by an automobile, can barely lift his battered and poverty-ridden body up off the cold dirt of the cold dirt canyon floor where he hides to avoid being deported.

Delaney's son Jordan - who "scuffed into the kitchen, cat at his heels" (there is that cat image again) - is six years old and "dedicated to Nintendo, superheroes and baseball cards." (The juxtaposition: Candido likely has never seen a Nintendo game; and Candido's son, or daughter, to be his first-born, was still in the womb of Candido's young wife, and faced huge struggles prior to even being born, through the fact of being the offspring of a homeless woman.)

And while Candido and his wife pick wild berries and eat irregularly and unhealthily, Kyra, Delaney's wife, "insisted on the full nutritional slate for her son every morning...." And that full slate included "fresh fruit, granola with skim milk and brewer's yeast," a "hi-fiber bar" and of course 'Vitamins" and "roughage."

Further contrasts between the families emerge as readers learn that Kyra is a successful real estate agent, and the language to describe her life goes like this: (35) "I'm presenting two offers this morning...I've got a buyer with cold feet on that Calabasas property - with escrow due to close in eight days..." Meanwhile, the language used by Boyle to describe America (48), ties Candido's wife in with real estate, all right, but at the other end of the totem pole from Kyra: "[Candido] kept picturing [America] in some rich man's house, down on her knees scrubbing one of those tiled kitchens with a refrigerator the size of a meat locker...and the rich man watching her ass as it waved in the air and trembled with the hard push of her shoulders." vivid contrast between the two families is offered by Boyle (57) as first, America is waiting for the chance to be offered work, suffering through the humility of abject poverty and homelessness ("She sat there from dawn till noon and she didn't get work" and "walked aimlessly around the lot."). Next, meanwhile, while poor America begs for a chance from dawn till noon, Kyra (68) pulls her car up in front of a "big and airy" house at 11:15 A.M. The house has a marble entrance hall, six bedrooms, pool, maid's room and guesthouse." This house is likely to sell for six and a half million, while if American earned six and a half dollars, she and her injured husband could eat some food that had nutritional value to it.

Yet another contrast - and irony - in this book occurs (118-120) when Delaney's car had been stolen, or towed, and Delaney winds up walking uphill - instead of driving in luxury - on a road that "wasn't designed for pedestrians." So he hops the guardrail and "plows through the brush" which causes "burrs and seedheads" to get caught in his sox. And moreover, annoying horns "blared" and "tires screeched" into his ears. (Those horns, screeching tires, burrs and seedheads of course are just another part of live for Candido and his wife.)

Worse yet, poor Delaney, while waiting for his wife to call back, had to sit "on the curb in front of the pay phone in a litter of Doritos bags and candy wrappers" for "ten agonizing minutes" - a far cry from the lifetime of putting up with litter that Candido endured as part of his reality.

And as Candido himself could easily be described as the "walking dead," on page 146 Boyle writes that the police "had taken the report [of Delaney's stolen car] with all the enthusiasm of the walking dead..."

Literature Review of The Tortilla Curtain

Most - though not all - critics enjoyed / appreciated Boyle's book, which is certainly not unique to this work. A few of the journal articles discovered in research for this paper will be reviewed in the paragraphs below.

What Boyle is actually revealing in his novel (Brzezinski 1996) is the "cultural collision in Southern California," the "brutal reality" of a land that either denies Candido and America's existence or "seeks to make them invisible." And as to those Candidos of the world who would come here to work, and then send their meager earnings home to Mexico to help relatives steeped in brutal poverty, "Their tragedy is that they ask for so little, yet receive even less," writes Brzezinski. The denial of human and economic rights to aliens takes several forms in Boyle's novel: "building a wall to keep undesirables out, rousting them off street corners as nuisances, laughing at their poor English."

And, to boot, Brzezinski continues, "Ironically, this abhorrence is fundamentally on aesthetic rather than behavioral grounds." The loathing of illegals in the novel is not because they are "taking American jobs" or committing crimes, but in fact because they "mar the beauty of the landscape" with their "rag-tag clothes and pathetic possessions." The real crime is they are "bad for property values," which says a lot about how much some Americans live and think.

In a Migration World Magazine article (Spencer 1996), the writer states that while the Boyle book "has heft, its story is slight..." Spencer goes on to give Boyle credit for his "first rate" job in "capturing the terror of looking for work in an alien society..." Spencer also believes Boyle is "convincing, even stirring," in the telling of the Candido and America story and through those characters exposing "both society's injustices and the cold implacability of the privileged classes..."

However, Spencer continues, Boyle "undoes himself" by diving his "considerable narrative and stylistic gifts" between the Rincons' story and Delaney's story - "a rather contemptible yuppie couple whose deeply unremarkable experiences are set in opposition to the Rincons." Why is Boyle "undone" by his use of contrasting chapters, which jump back and forth from the Rincons to the Delaneys? A novel with a "dual structure" takes great risks, Spencer asserts, because a reader "will fasten on one of the stories at the expense of the other."