The earth did not devour him by tomas rivera Essay

The earth did not devour him by tomas rivera - Essay Example 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 â€Å"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, â€Å"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 o n 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 â€Å"The Lost Year† and continues with thirteen short unnamed essays and twelve essays that are named and end with the story â€Å"Under the House†. ... .  Ã‚   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 s everal 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 â€Å"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 â€Å"She had fallen asleep† which tells about a fortune teller meeting with a family, or â€Å"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 â€Å"The Night the Lights Went out† and â€Å"First Communion â€Å" also refers to night and sleep, when