America is in the heart analysis

Part 3, Chapter 30 Summary

Carlos is deeply affected by Marian's death. He begins drinking and roaming around the West Coast aimlessly. He meets two girls on a bus, Lily and Rosaline, and gets off in Medford where they live. They had run off to San Diego to marry sailors. Carlos stays at a hotel but joins their family for dinner and goes swimming with them and their friends. The next morning he is on a bus headed for Seattle.

When he arrives in Seattle he meets Conrado Torres and learns what is happening. The contractors have hired armed thugs. The local cannery union head, Dagohoy, and two other Filipinos enter the restaurant as Conrado and Carlos are leaving. They hear shooting in the restaurant and find that the three union officials had been shot and killed.

Carlos goes to San Francisco after the funeral for a meeting of the Filipino unions. He finds Jose who is still mending from the San Jose beatings. Ganzo attends the meeting and Carlos goes to Salinas to find Mariano. There he receives word that a union has been formed called the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). He tells Jose he will go to Los Angeles to pick up his belongings and then returns to help. They will meet in Lompoc.

Carlos goes to Macario's in Los Angeles. He meets a girl named Dora Travers who is waiting for Macario one day. She supports him in his poetry writing. Carlos begins coughing up blood. Macario calls a doctor for him and they learn he is in the advanced stages of tuberculosis. Macario says he will stay by Carlos and help him until he is well.

Part 3, Chapter 30 Analysis

Carlos, who has only known Marian a short time, is deeply affected by her death. Instead of staying in Los Angeles for school, he starts roaming around the West Coast again and drinking. In Seattle, he and Conrado walk out of a restaurant right before three cannery union officials are shot and killed. Carlos plans to help Jose in Lompoc but in Los Angeles he becomes ill. He is diagnosed with tuberculosis. His brother Macario vows to remain with him and help him until he is well. Macario remembers their brother Luciano who wasted away from the same disease.

Literary Realism: life presented with no filter, through a clear glass window, one tool used is Verismilitude= the appearance of truth (done by writing transparently) Bulosan, has not only this but also American Naturalism which is an intensification of realism that includes figurtive language and imagry. Naturalism tends to focus on fringe characters from the depths while realism focuses on middle class. Naturalistic determiniation: having your fate determiend for you by outside forces.

The (3) Forces of Determinism 1. Biology

a. Darwinism evolution, survival of the fittest) b. Then you would expect the BEtrayal of the body: sexual drives, hunger,

etc. The body has a deterministic role, ie. people get cold, people get hungry, and that determines things.

c. Degenerate heredity fits in here d. Osciliating pattern of looking at the sex stuff to move on to Bulosan

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2. Enviornment : Nature a. Nature is not hostile, only indifferent and flat its not malvalent, its vast and

doesnt care about the puny individual or the individuals needs i. Ex: pg 13 Buloson - “We tried to save every ear of corn but the

rain came” “rain” pg 13, “soil “ on pg 30 are also examples 3. Material Forces: aka Material Institutions

a. Social, (geo)political, economic forces and occurances i. Examples Bulosan names?

1. Pg 24 “Large corporations, banks, and the church” 2. Pg 27 “its is not our plantation anymore” once belonged to

the church now to a rich man 3. Pg 5 “ the philippnies was undergoing a radical social

changes plunging the nation into a great economic castrperoe that tore the islands from their roots

a. The power weiled by these material institutions and forces are as powerful as hurricanes is what is being said here

Research Question 1: Why is Bulosan forever announcing beginnings and endings of things? What is the arc of this story?

● Consider Genres, Firstly ○ Ex: epic poems, sonnect, musical, documentary

■ vs . Literary traditions (realist naturliast) ■ If you try to do a literary tradition in a different genre it might even be

considered a parody. ● Genres:

○ BildungsRoman and its Conventions: (often called novels of formation/education0

■ A core building genre where the individual is a core unit of a society ● Usually stories about how an indifivual comes into being and

reflects a growth/model of growth/refliection within in the individual ■ Individual

● youth→ maturity ● Novel of formation/education

■ Leaves home ● Individuation vs conformity

○ The literature has someone leaving a small town or somehwere which proompts a struggle between the the individuation and the conformaty demaded by society

● But after leaving the individual experinecs “rises in station” ○ “Finds place” in society

○ American “Immigrant” Narrative ■ Similar to bildungsRoman - similar conventions

Conventions: ■ Rural village ■ Long jounrey ■ Empty-handed ■ Arduous struggle ■ “Finds place” in new land ■ Accepted into social order

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Following the Conventional Narrative Arc: ● Exposition → Conflict → Rising action → climax → falling action → Resolution →

+ Character Growth

Which Literary traditions fit well with Bildungsroman or immigrant forms- Romantics - Godlike Realist - Person Naturalist - Helpless Object

So, Does Bulosan’s story arc look like this? Like a conventional narrative arc? ● Well consider:

○ “We arrived in Seattle…” (99) ○ “It was the beginning of my life in America, the beginning of a long flgiht.” (101) ○ “This isthe beginning of your life in America” (111)

Bulosan uses: Competing Narrative Imperatives: ● Bildungsroman ● Immigrant narratve (content and form) ● Naturalist narrative (content)

○ Bulosan wants this kind of life: rural vialge → empty handed → long arduous journey/struggle → finds place in land/accepted in order, but his subject matter, his life is a spiral.(Natralist content, helpless object)

■ So the story itself, the subject matter wreaks havoc on the narrative arc. ● So when Bulosan has multiple beginnings and endings it is

although he is trying to reset that immigrant narrative cuz he want it to end up fitting the standard. Thus Bulosan’s form and content is an Oscilating Pattern (ups and downs)

○ Consider pg 99 when he glinches the shore of seatle, we atrrived by first sight of the land was and exilerating experience. Everythng seemed familar and kind, the white faces of the buildings melting into the afternoon sun.

Bulosan is striving to tell an American Dream story ● American Dream

○ Mythic story: land of opportunity (but consider the formal category of filipinos at the time as wards which was a way of excluding them

○ Material barriers to inclusion ■ Look for this in pg 268 where the barring of filipinos from jobs and other

forms of exlcusion and written about. ○ Yet there is invincible idealism (104)

Idealism/Dispair Manifests struggle between: ● Bildungsroman, Immigrant Narrative

○ “Triumpth of the individual” ■ Realism, check, Romanticism check

● Naturalism ○ Flickers of humanity and agency (112) - here he grabs hold of his humanity and

agency but...

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○ Toward humanity’s demise (135) “i found man indistinguishable from beast” - here we see how his humanity has been estinguished

Consider This While reading part 3: Part 2 ending suggests part 3 will shape out differently, does it? Pay attention to that.

America is in the Heart: Form:

● American literary realism: realists believe art should be presented as life seen through a clear glass window: story is natural and transparent. No falsifying of messing with story

● Versimilitude: truth-like, perceives the individuals simply as a person ● American naturalism: intensification of realism. Focuses on characters from lower

depths of contemporary society, perceives the individual as a helpless object ○ Naturalistic determinism: human beings as tiny figures at the mercy of

great forces ● Bildungsroman=about the growth and development of an individual-leaves home

at the beginning of the story. Youth to maturity. Finds place in society. ● Conventional Narrative Arc: (beginning), Complication, Climax, Resolution ● Immigrant Narrative: individual starts in a rural village embarks on a long journey.

Long, arduous struggle. “finds place in a new land”, accepted into social order ● Naturalist Narrative: ● Forces of determinism

○ 1. Biology: darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest ○ 2. Environment: nature is not hostile but is indifferent ○ 3. Material Forces: social, (geo) political, economic

■ first encounter material forces-sense that different institutions are conspiring, rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer

■ page 24: state of the Phillipines after revolt ● Fight/Flight-fighting powers or fleeing from them

○ “fighting to the end on the land” ○ “Fleeing to manhood”

● Oscillating patter (up and down attitude)-bipolar narrative ○ Pattern repeates: hitting restart

Content: ● Glorious Promise/Vicious Trap

○ Page 77-78: at first is dancing with woman views her as amazing, then views her as “mud-smelling peasant”

○ Page 102: sexual affairs between Indian woman and fellow phillipino (delicious)

○ Page 103: indian woman gets pregnant; become vicious trap ○ Marriage ○ Page 89: brother had a lot of kids (Luciano)-in ten years “would be burden

with so many responsibilities that he would want to lay down and die”

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○ Trap: (105)-cheatswoman at dancehall cheating phillipinos of their money ● Women (traps) as agents of deterministic forces

○ Helen ■ Sexual predator ■ Powerful, Helen=godlike agency ■ Vicious trap ■ 1 woman having so much power over group of men-was able to

control/stop the strike ■ beaten to death-deserving of violence

● Maternal Figure ○ Idealized ○ Preserving force of his humanity ○ nurturing and sacrificial figure (page 280)-

● White Maternal Proxies ○ As glorious American promise

■ Maternal=food +books ■ Alice Odell (writer, first woman he encountered)

■ Took care of him in hospital/warmth ■ Eileen Odell

■ Brought books and delicacies ■ Exact oppositive of her sister

○ Good (white) woman-no sexual contact ■ Eileen: related her to America ■ Mary: symbol of goodness, “angel”, healthly/clean platonic

relationship ■ Marian

● Women as Symbols of Paradoxical America ○ Negative agents of destruction

■ Nature/capitalism/imperialism ○ Positive angel figures

■ Chance/god/communist party ● Women as more than man/women as less than man

○ Tied to a tree

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