Author’s Note: This post contains spoiler information about T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain. If you do not wish to know the ending, do not read this entry. I also caution you to stay away from the amateur book review hour at Amazon, loaded with spoilers. If you are a high school student or undergraduate looking for a summary to help you with your quiz or paper, get off the computer and go read the book. If you are in book club that I moderate, here is what I promised. Have a great meeting without me, and I apologize I will not be there to instigate tangential conversations on husbands, sex, thumb-sucking, potty training, sex, television shows, other books, ex-boyfriends, mother-in-laws and Prince. (If you are in a different book club, feel free to use any of my statements, but do not judge us for our tangents. The laughter thwarts our crying and minimizes our wine drinking).
When I closed the book cover of T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain for the last time, I felt like I do when I eat an entire bag of Dove chocolates for breakfast --- satiated, enriched, and nourished. Wonderful sensations overwhelmed me after reading this great book that challenged me, moved me, made me feel deeply for the characters, and prompted me to admire the author’s application of satire and social realism. But just like when I eat an entire bag of candy, the euphoria passed and the stomachache started….triggered this time by abyssal reviews, not sugar shock.
Time Magazine writes “This is weak, obvious stuff, worth a raised eyebrow and a shrug.” The review in New Statesman & Society states: “Boyle explores powerful issues through his parallel characters, but they operate just shy of caricature. They are more symbolic figures than real inhabitants of a state wallowing in economic downturn. The Mexicans are naive, but essentially good, while their Anglo counterparts grow increasingly ugly with rage.” And if those reviews weren’t harsh enough, World Literature Today wrote: “Perhaps if he had taken a harder-edged look, in the manner of Steinbeck, instead of the sometimes facetious one we find here, the results would have been more deeply affecting.”
The critics are right, and I have been duped into loving this book, being moved by this book, feeling deeply for these characters that might be nothing more than caricatures. It is true that Boyle’s message is simple: Mexicans are hard working and just want a shot at the American dream, and suburban whites are unemphatic, uncompassionate, and inconvenienced by illegal immigrants until they need some manual labor done for less than U.S. minimum wage.
Even though I grew up in a nearly all-white community (except for the one adopted black boy and the two adopted Vietnamese kids) and I currently live in a well-educated, affluent city with a miniscule Mexican population, I know that immigration is more complicated of an issue than the good and innocent Mexicans versus the empirical, greedy whites. So, why did I fall for this novel? Perhaps the characters are not as “flat” as the critics claim them to be. I would argue that three out of the four characters are somewhat plump if not fully round characters that are simply trapped in novel with a basic plot, a simple polemic, and puerile symbolism.
So, what do I mean by flat and round characters? These terms come from E.M. Forester’s Aspects of the Novel, and the definitions are simple. Flat characters are straight forward. They are what they are, and do not experience any changes throughout the book. These are typically characters that symbolize some type of idea like good or evil. Round characters are fully developed, thoroughly complex emotionally and socially, and undergo some type of conflict, change, and development for better or for worse. The most famous creator of flat characters is Charles Dickens. (FYI: Never call Charles Dickens’ characters flat while studying Victorian literature in England even if you have absolutely nothing else to say because you were out clubbing instead of reading Oliver Twist. The British are in denial, and they really don’t need more to put them in a dour mood. The bad weather and the bad food are plenty).
So, why is Boyle lambasted for having flat characters and not afforded the same praise as Dickens as a socio-political novelist? And, how flat are the characters? Let’s quickly review the characters:
- Kyra Mossbacher is the flattest, most evil and least interesting character out of the four main characters. She is basically a dog-loving Cruella de Vil who has no compassion for immigrants and wants to wall out anyone who is different from her. She is an uninteresting caricature who slows the book down every time she shows a multi-million dollar house or complains about the illegals at the labor exchange, who are causing property values to drop. Does she have any redeemable qualities?
- Delaney Mossbacher is easily the character with the most potential for change and has the power to influence the most lives in the Topanga Canyon. As a perceptive nature writer, he holds dearly onto progressive liberal views about man and nature living harmoniously, but struggles with his views on immigration. He knows that the hysteria about illegals is racist; he knows our country is a land of immigrants. But at the same time, he is barely ruffled when he nearly kills a man with his car and throws $20 at him to make him go away once he realizes he is an illegal immigrant who won’t press charges or sue. He is far more devastated that a coyote jumped over his six foot fence and killed his two dogs. What are Delaney’s redeeming qualities? If Delaney would have been more complex and would have not sheepishly joined the xenophobic frenzy, would have the outcome been different? What other options did he have? We live in a community that is indisputably green and full of environmentalists and naturalists but is nowhere near the border; do you feel any of Delaney’s sentiments in our community? I don’t know much about immigration viewpoints in our community; I just know that I fear being mulled to death by wildlife far more than immigrants. (Not for comic effect, truly my most irrational fear).
- Cándido Rincon is less flat than Kyra, but he is essentially a caricature with an impeccable work ethic, fiery temperament and tragic childhood. Cándido becomes a symbol that Boyle uses to represent the entire Mexican culture, particularly Mexican males. He gives Candido a great sense of pride, determination, and anger; he is both protective and sexist. He is religious and traditional, particularly towards women working and his first-born child being a son. Boyle takes no risks with Cándido. He might as well be made out of cardboard. What are his redeeming qualities, and what steps could have Cándido taken to make the tragic outcome different?
- América Rincon is the most tragic character in the novel, and her story keeps the novel moving. As a pregnant seventeen-year-old from a small Mexican village, she starts out innocently looking for the American dream complete with a T.V., a tree in the yard and a place to raise chickens. Until crossing the border with the father of her unborn baby and the former husband of her oldest sister, she led a sheltered life in safety of her father’s protection. She left her father’s protection to give her baby what the United States of America could offer. In pursuit of the American dream, she experiences great personal triumph by earning her own money. Readers feel her hope and pride right alongside her. We want to see this potential heroine succeed, but instead her money is stolen and she is raped, leaving her with a sexually transmitted disease, unable to seek medical attention or contact her mother and sisters for help. Her dream only continues to unravel more as the labor exchange is closed, thugs rob Cándido of his money; she is forced to eat garbage in the city; and, live in the wilderness of the canyon like an animal; her mental condition deteriorates to a near catatonic state; and, she gives birth to a blind baby (caused by her gonorrhoea) who drowns in a mudslide. Wow, that is a lot of contrived devastation to pull at the heartstrings, but her story is gripping, heart-wrenching and thought-provoking from cover to cover.
Boyle uses characters that range from completely flat to symbolically round to make his political points. What other techniques does he use to elucidate the story? Symbolism, multiple points of views told in alternating chapters, and third person omniscient narrator.
- Symbolism: Boyle’s use of the coyotes to symbolize the immigrants and the community wall to represent border control is so blatantly obvious that it is unchallenging to the readers and somewhat insulting. Are there any other symbols that are not as obvious? What about the cat, the baby, the materials from the doghouse?
- Third person omniscient narrator is used by Boyle to convey a sense of neutrality, but all of the narrator’s smug foreshadowing titbits are just annoying and distracting. Did you notice the narrator’s foreshadowing? Did you think the narrator was completely neutral in the storytelling?
- Multiple points of views in alternating chapters: By no means is Boyle as gifted as Barbara Kingsolver in the Poisonwood Bible, but he definitely could teach Julia Alvarez a thing or two. In Saving the World, the alternating between Isabel and Alma’s stories did nothing to move the novel forward and were marginally linked. In contrast, Boyle’s use of alternating chapters about Cándido/ América and Kyra/Delaney keep the entire book together and conceal how simple the story really was. At the conclusion of each chapter, Boyle is able leave the readers in a state of suspense. Readers rapidly get through the next chapter to get back to the other story. He sprinkles the characters marginally into each other stories in order to keep the reader interested and not willing to skip one half of the novel (which is possible in both Larson’s Devil in the White City and Alvarez’s Saving the World, but probably better just to skip her whole novel .)
It is a truly skillful author that can use structure and form to make a simplistic idea and rudimentary symbolism seem like great literature. It is unfortunate that when Boyle broke the narrative structure and put the characters together in the final chapter, the entire novel collapsed. The ending reads like Boyle got bored with his characters, and just wanted to call it a wrap. So, he created a bunch of drama with the gun, the mudslide, and the river in order to the kill the baby (who symbolizes the American dream) and so that the brown man save the white man.
The conclusion is so heavy handed that the simplistic message probably eradicates any complexity that did exist in the book. Perhaps with a different ending, this book would not have been so widely panned by literary critics. So although I agree with critics that this novel is not literary fiction, I still love this book because it made me think; it made me feel; it made me focus on literary style and structure. I give it a big thumbs up and would recommend it to my patrons.
So, there you have it, 1,914 words that I wrote for you just for fun. Oh, it just would have been easier to have found a babysitter.
