84 pages • 2 hours read
Will HobbsCrossing the Wire
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Jaguar
The jaguar, or tigre, represents Victor’s inner strength. Victor associates the jaguar with his family and home. He has a vivid memory of a childhood encounter with a jaguar, and his father told him that their ancestors “built some of their greatest temples to the tigre. The powers of other animals didn’t even come close” (26).
Victor calls upon these powers at two pivotal moments in the book. First, when a puma stalks Victor on the mountain, he pretends to be a jaguar, for strength:“The puma wasn’t so sure it wanted a piece of me after all. I reached for a big stick, a piece of a shattered tree limb that the wind had brought down, and started waving it around and around like a crazy man” (114). Second, when Victor and Rico are running from Jarra, a jaguar reveals to Victor a path to escape: “I slapped myself awake, fully awake. I doubted the jaguar, but not the message, whoever had sent it—maybe my father? One of the jaguar’s powers, my father once told me, was invisibility, the ability to move unseen. Maybe Rico and I could cross the peak unseen and escape before Jarra knew we were gone” (188).
The Rattlesnake
The rattlesnake represents Victor’s fear and feelings that he is not as brave as Rico. As Victor’s attitude toward his own fear evolves, so do his interactions with rattlesnakes. In the book’s first chapter, Victor admits he is afraid of rattlesnakes, unlike Rico, and he hesitates when Rico asks him to crawl under a cactus. Rico doesn’t understand what Victor is afraid of, and Victor sees his own fear as a weakness, rather than justifiable caution.
Later, when the boys are reunited in Nogales, Victor wants to rest under a mesquite tree, but Rico is irritated by his lack of success crossing the border and snaps, “You fight off the rattlesnakes. I’m going back into town.” Victor responds, “You don’t need to scare me, Rico. I’m scared enough, just like you. I tell you, everything will be better.” In this moment, it is Victor who is willing to risk facing his fear (i.e., the rattlesnakes under the tree) because the benefit of shade (i.e., crossing the border) is worth the cost. Meanwhile, Rico is frustrated by this slow and steady approach, and their tense interaction draws attention to the inherent conflict in the two boys’ personalities and foreshadows their coming disagreement, when Rico lies to Victor about his plan to have them carry food for the drug mules.
Finally, on their trip with Jarra and the drug mules, Victor is bitten: “All my life, somehow, I had known this was coming” (167). The bite should kill Victor, yet he survives—he attributes his luck to his mother praying for him to the Virgin of Guadalupe. This moment serves as an embodiment of Victor’s inner bravery, as he is able to survive his greatest fear.
Cars
As a motif, cars help to explain two of the books major themes, “The American Dream and Hard Work,” and “Globalization and the Changing Economy.”
Cars represent American culture, wealth, and success. As Victor says, “Rico always spoke of cars with reverence, even in front of his father, who couldn’t afford one. Nobody in Los Árboles could, and the same went for tractors. Ours was a village with so little that it didn’t even have the trees it was named after” (7). Cars are a luxury that Americans have but Mexicans don’t; instead, immigrants must travel by bus, by foot, through the tunnels, or by hiding in the back of someone else’s car.
Cars are also strongly associated with globalization and changes to economic and immigration policy. The car most frequently mentioned in the book is a Suburban. These vehicles are manufactured at a factory that Rico’s brother-in-law works at in Silao, a factory that wouldn’t exist without free trade agreements with the U.S. However, these immigrants use these same vehicles when crossing the border to seek better jobs in the U.S.—coyotes use them to transport immigrants across the border and Victor and Julio hide in them on the train. Vigilantes who chase these immigrants also use Suburbans, and this car, in turn, is associated with all phases of the border-crossing journey.
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