The Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera - Essay Example

? [Supervisor’s The earth did not devour him “Under the House” is a collection of stories which emphasizethe only occasions where a person can emphasize the individuality or uniqueness of the storyteller’s central character. The short essays are mostly brief statements of opinions, every so often unambiguously connected to stories that come before or after, or alternatively to assumptions. The stories are longer than the short essay, and include narratives in the first and third person for statements attributed to individuals, and sometime for formal discussions. The first and last stories construct the book as specifically starting and conclusively narration. . It depicts the migrant Chicano workers who are in no better condition than slaves; in fact they are probably worse off. Slaves were the property of owners who regarded upon whom they had invested money and accordingly were taken care of as “valued financial investments.” The migrant workers were not considered investments, and were living and working in conditions of slavery without even the basic reimbursement. (Tomas Rivera, “Remembering, Discovery and Volition in the Literary Imaginative Process,” in Tomas Rivera: The Complete Works (1975). The narration of Tomas Rivera’s books ‘the earth did not devour him” is about the predicament and patient survival of Mexican American farm workers, which has made prominent and strengthened the Chicano national perception. The narration is part of the author’s personal experience while working on a farm during his youth, because his parents were migrant workers. The quality of the book is the way that the subject matter poses a challenge to readers and critics alike. The narration begins with the story “The Lost Year” and continues with thirteen short unnamed essays and twelve essays that are named and end with the story “Under the House”. Rivera’s comments must also be examined in context to the abandoning of the “Bracero” program in 1964, which further depressed the conditions of migrant workers. The Bracero program was a series of diplomatic agreements between Mexico and the United States for employment of temporary or seasonal workers in the United States. .   With the expansion of American modernizing influences, the pressure on the migrant workers increased to become a part of American culture, which further exacerbated and makes worse the plight of the migrant’s already dismal state of affairs. This disorderly and turbulent state of affairs is accessed through the mind of a Mexican American boy, who evaluates his feelings of ethnic indecision by questioning his community’s customary way of life. Some of the short essays depict irregular attempts by the boy to congregate his thoughts and feelings towards successive development for rational intelligibility. In the course of his steady allusion to darkness, night, or sleep in all the essays, Rivera strengthens the boy’s succession from mental vagueness about his community’s knowledge to academic clarification regarding the community’s circumstances and the way of life. Although not linked to any particular change towards explanation, there are several referrals to darkness, night and sleep which intensify the book’s complete fascination with night and the darkness. The events in the narration consists of several essays of events that occur at night, such “what his mother never knew” as the water that his mother placed under his bed for the spirits and which he drank every night, or in the essay “She had fallen asleep” which tells about a fortune teller meeting with a family, or “Hands in His Pocket” a boy cannot sleep his first night in a bizarre, disconcerting room. This short essay again refers to the night when the same boy who cannot sleep in a strange room, has to drag a dead man to his grave when it gets very dark. Other essay such as the “The Night the Lights Went out” and “First Communion “ also refers to night and sleep, when it is in the context of how the boy depicted in the essay could not sleep just the night before, because he was trying to remember all his sins for his first confession in the morning. These short essays fill the essay in darkness; other essays strengthen the link between these dark episodes and the boy’s psychological manifestations. A quality of surreal consideration surrounds the novel from the first short essay, “The Lost Year” which shows the unnamed boy in a profound contemplative condition in which he feels that everything will clear up, only to find himself in the same psychological smog. During this continuous dream like stupor, in which he is continuously thinking, the boy falls asleep. Because he started thinking at this time, which he had never done before his mind would become empty, and he would fall asleep, before which he would see and perceive many things. This indistinguishable contact between psychological suggestion and sleep leaves a feeling of mental uncertainty which continues throughout the book and is determined only in the last essay. In the essays “A Slivery Night” and the “Earth Did Not Devour Him” the boy explores the religious viewpoints of his culture, and thinks seriously about his decision before going to sleep. He explores his doubts about the existence of the devil by trying to convene him on a “silvery night” and returns home disappointed, with a lot more doubts and questions when there is no response from the devil. With this mental confusion, the boy’s echoing thoughts are approached and emotions are implicated before the boy falls asleep. After these thoughts, which come to him before he falls asleep, the boy sees everything clearly, and understands everything and then is able to fall asleep in the serene radiance of the night sky. This experience of religion is linked to darkness in the book “And the Earth Did Not Devour Him”. The boy questions his sacred religious values when he sees his family suffering as migrant workers, and cursing God is the only way that he thinks he can release his rage, anguish and skepticism. That night, although he had trouble falling asleep, finally he fell asleep with a feeling of peace as he had never felt before. In both essays he rejects his religion, replacing it with intellectual logic in which he felt peace as he had never felt before in his life. These instances of budding lucidity highlight the book’s most important instant of understanding in “Under the House”. In this essay, the boy sits in darkness beneath a house, thinking that he feels contented and at ease in the dark, because there is no one to inconvenience him he can think very clearly in the dark since thoughts occur speedily to him. He knows that he likes the darkness because it gives him the capability of thinking about anything without being disturbed. Reflecting over these measures and discovering and rediscovering and putting things collectively, the boy comes out from the gloom, from the psychological gloom with a clear mind that is brought on by the suffering endured by his community. This is replaced by a coherent power to think that takes the place of the culture based faith of his community’s clarification of the world. After this instructive surfacing the excited boy undergoes a feeling of accomplishment, in the manner that the boy in “And the Earth”, materializes feeling that he has the ability of doing anything that he likes. The first and last essays depict the whole book’s unification about the boy’s passage from rational inquiry to conviction, emphasized by the language of darkness and night. The descriptive tones in the novel are not single but many, and are occasionally heard as if sung together by many people. Some critics maintain that Tierra is a collection of short stories, others are sure that these are a collection of essays, but everyone considers and reads this work as a novel. The different attitudes and points of view all depend upon different levels of assumption. As an example, the most common view is that the stories represent the calendar year, which is the twelve months of the year, either real or symbolic, recalled by the central character in the different texts. This outlook cannot be maintained constantly since the stories and essays are written in sequential uncertainty and relative lists are not matched with a descriptive chronological development or an inflexible position. Tomas Rivera’s “And the Earth did not Devour him” is revolutionary although concise and straightforward. It is required of the reader to establish links between the narratives and determine the uniqueness and associations of the characters and the significance of other people in the novel who are not named. Rivera accuses no one, does not evaluate or arraign because the incidents, events and his characters narratives are themselves quite expressive. Anyone reading this novel must make his/her own decisions regarding bias on the selection of scenes, stories or hear what other say have allowed the writer to observe, to grieve and to express sympathy in order to affect the reader’s feelings. The purpose of the novel seems to be to highlight the plight of migrant workers like the ones he worked and passed his youth with. He hopes to expose their expectations, thoughts and ideas as they endure difficulties, meditate, rejoice and recall past memories. The Earth Did Not Devour Him is made up of twenty seven serialized works. Twelve of the episodes are descriptive stories, while thirteen of the essays are concise, untitled essays that emphasize issues. The last two essays are preliminary, but the closing narrations that constitute the novel practically help in making the novel coherent. Some of the characters are mentioned in several stories but others are not. Some characters are given identities, while others are not. The story is not written in the traditional manner of having a central plot with increased accomplishments, culmination and decisions. The novel shows the disjointed reminiscences of a young boy. Several of the essays are personal and narrated by the boy, while some are narrated by a third person, and the remaining parts are narrated through interviews. The way that Rivera tells a story is quite disjointed and uneven because he gives partial and out-of-the-way pieces of information. The process permits the writer to cover a wide range of events without the usual limitations of events set in a precise time structure. The framework of the book tries to find a manner in which reminiscences have an impact and give feelings of incomprehension, or of being off course which is felt by many migrant workers as they make efforts to adjust to a culture which is alien to their way of life. Conclusively, the events intensely depicted are in reality a community’s fight back against unbelievable probabilities. Allegory, Symbolism The Earth Did Not Devour Him is Tomas Rivera’s narration which symbolizes the injustices, racism and discrimination suffered by Mexican migrant workers while working on the farms of Americans. These workers were treated worse than slaves and exploited in every possible manner by the farmers. Despite all the hardships and insecurity in almost all the stories, the novel also stresses the spirit of resistance and toughness shown by these workers. The author highlights the importance of education as the only means of freedom from their pathetic plight and suffering. Although, “And the Earth Did Not Devour Him” is only a collection of short and lengthy essay, everyone agrees that it tells about the realities of Chicano social history. Some believe that the essays bear political undertones but the reality is that Rivera was above political maneuvering. He genuinely had profound respect and compassion for all humanity, but most specifically for his community of Mexican migrant workers which inspired him to write and make efforts to improve himself through education, and also the plight of these migrant workers. Although the essays are quite straightforward, they tell of human perseverance even while facing harsh conditions. The entire narration is bound together by a young boy who struggles for his identity and remembers events even though he does not actually understand what is happening, which comes to its highest point in the conclusion of the last essay of the novel titled “Under the House”. Many of the narrations are personal which constitute different character in each essay and do not have any ordered existence. Some of them behave like undependable variables for personal views and estimation, including perceptual frameworks and lives of the migrant workers and their families which invoke some more serious considerations (River). Works Cited River, Tomas. "Study Guide for And the Earth Did Not Devour Him." 2013. The Glencoe Literatrue library. 14 March 2013. . Read More