Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in America Is in the Heart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Beauty in Despair
Race and American Identity
Education vs. Ignorance
Poverty
Summary
Analysis
Marian reveals that she is from Oregon and briefly attended college and picked hops before fleeing an affair with a man who turned out to be married. The death of another partner in a car accident left her distraught and directionless. Carlos tells her about his own struggles, and the two become close. Marian tells Carlos that she “wants someone to care for” and that “[he is] the one.” Carlos becomes increasingly infatuated with Marian, and she reminds him of the girl he once met on the freight train. In San Luis Obispo, Carlos learns from Ganzo that their labor work in the city is on the verge of failure and that enemies have captured Gazamen.
Like all of his relationships with women in the novel, Carlo’s relationship with Marian is platonic and maternal rather than sexual or romantic. Although Carlos sometimes mentions the physical beauty of the women in his life, he only occasionally expresses an explicit urge for sexual relationships with them. Because sex in Bulosan’s novel is usually characterized by deviance and criminality, Bulosan’s decision to depict Carlos’s relationships as platonic prevents the beauty of those relationships from becoming tainted by the deviance of sex as Carlos has experienced it in America.
Themes
Carlos and Marian eventually go to Santa Barbara, where Carlos meets a kitchen helper and aspiring writer named Florencio Garcia, who shows off his manuscripts. Soon, Marian gives Carlos money so that he can attend school. “I was with a white woman who completely surrendered herself to me,” he notes. He becomes further entranced by her beauty, and is shocked when they are able to eat in a fancy restaurant without getting harassed. After dinner, Marian faints crossing the street, and she stays overnight at a doctor’s office. When Carlos visits her the next day, she reveals that she is dying, and makes Carlos promise “not to hate” and instead to “love everything good and clean.” Within a few days, Marian dies due to complications from syphilis.
In contrast to Estevan, the suicidal writer whom Carlos met earlier in the novel, the writer Florencio does not meet a tragic end. This development mirrors Carlos’s own path as he continues to pursue his creative ambitions despite having endured much tragedy. However, a period of beauty again becomes one of despair when Marian dies shortly after meeting Carlos. Her dying words highlight again how important it will be for Carlos to continue focusing on the positive aspects of life, even when he’s tempted to feel hatred instead.
Themes
