And The Earth Did Not Devour Him

The book’s final chapter implies that Doña Maria is the narrator’s mother. Her story is told in Cchapter 11: She wants to purchase toys for her children and walks the six blocks into downtown but has a panic attack in the store. She suffers from extreme anxiety, and possibly agoraphobia, and is unable to leave her house. In the book’s final chapter, the narrator says his mother cried whenever she thought about her ill-fated trip downtown. Despite her anxiety, Doña Maria believes the children need something to believe in. When her husband wants to tell them there is no Santa Clause so they will stop asking their mother why they do not receive presents, she convinces him that would be mean. He agrees, though equivocally.

Within the story, “the boss” is not a single person but a reference to the nameless authority figures that wield power and influence over the migrant workers’ lives. The boss can be benevolent or sinister. In the chapter titled “The Children Couldn’t Wait,” a boss denies his workers sufficient water and plots to cheat workers out of their wages by catching them drinking from the cattle’s water tank. Trying to catch a child drinking water after being told not to, the boss accidentally shoots the child dead and gets off, though he loosesloses both his money and his sanity in the aftermath. Characters contrast a cruel boss with nicer ones they worked under “up north,” a catchall phrase to indicate farms in states north of Texas, where the workers are based.

Don Mateo’s son, Chuy, dies in Korea. He commissions a portrait of his son and gives the artist the only picture Don Mateo and his wife have of him. The portrait artist runs off with the money and dumps the photo, along with countless others. This scam is one of many perpetrated against and, in some cases, by migrant workers throughout the story. What most angers Don Mateo is not losing the money he spent for the portrait but his wife’s despair at losing the only photo she has of her son. Don Mateo hunts down the portrait artist and demands he create the promised portrait. In the end, it is unclear whether the portrait actually resembles Chuy. Because the picture was lost, the portrait was recreated from memory. What matters is the solace the portrait gives to Don Mateo and his wife and its symbolic significance in the story.

The narrator stays with Don Laíto and Doña Bone for three weeks as he waits for the school year to end. Everyone likes the couple, but the narrator discovers their sinister side. They steal, delight in frightening and shocking the boy, and put him to work in their yard, despite his father having paid for his room and board. They murder an illegal alien who has money but is alone, and they compel the narrator to dig the man’s grave. After he returns home, they visit him to give him the dead man’s ring, a reminder of the crime the boy unwillingly participated in and that they could implicate him at any time if he does not remain quiet about what he saw and did.

Don Efraín and Doña Chona are the parents of three young children. The family enjoys an outing together the night before two of the children die in a fire. Don Efraín expresses his love for his children and worries about leaving them alone while he and his wife work in the fields. Their boss does not allow children since they can distract their parents from working. By necessity, then, the children are left alone in the house during the day. Ironically, the pleasant family outing unwittingly contributes to the children’s death, as it was mimicking a boxing match, as the children had done with their parents after watching a boxing movie together, that contributed to the their deaths. The oldest boy rubbed their bodies with alcohol. When the stove explodes, their children catch fire, and their brother is not able to save them.

Ramón is in love with Juanita and asks her to marry him. She says that she loves him but that her father wants her to finish school first. When she is up north, she flirts with and has outings with another man, which Ramón finds out from his friends. He does not want to break up with her, but he does. His motives for breaking up with her are unclear. Perhaps he is ashamed to be seen as weak by his friends, who report Juanita’s relationship with another man. Perhaps his pride is hurt. Perhaps he is attempting to assert himself against her. After their breakup, he tells her she will pay for betraying him and demands that she not dance with any other men. She tells him she will do what she wants. When he catches her dancing with another man and confronts her, they argue, and she slaps him. Others at the dance hear him say something to her, then rush out. The next day, electric company workers find him dead of from suicide. He grabbed a transformer and was electrocuted, causing a town-wide blackout.