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
The rainy season arrives and Carlos’s legs swell up, preventing him from going to school. He spends time with Francisca, and sometimes a boy from school reads to him from outside the window. Other times a girl comes to his house to teach him to sing. Missing school saddens Carlos. As the next land payment looms, Father hires himself out to some village farmers and Luciano, having completed his three-year service in the Philippine Scouts, returns home. He has contracted tuberculosis in the army. Although he is only 22 years old, he appears tired. Carlos calls Luciano “a man of wide experience,” as he can use a typewriter and is familiar with machines such as cars and motorcycles.
Here, Bulosan details the unique methods Carlos employs to continue his education when he is unable to attend school. Although he is missing time in the formal classroom, Bulosan continues the thread of hope coexisting with tragedy by introducing Carlos’s brother Luciano, who will teach Carlos important lessons that will serve him through the remainder of his life.
Themes
Luciano teaches Carlos to snare colorful birds by the grassy river without hurting them. Luciano catches Carlos a singing bird and Carlos keeps it at home. But the bird soon becomes ill and refuses to eat. Luciano tells Carlos that the bird “has lost something precious,” and urges Carlos to keep it alive. When the bird finally dies, Carlos is inconsolable. Luciano carries Carlos to the river to watch him set up snares to catch more birds. Although peasants often eat birds, Luciano forbids the family from eating the ones that he and Carlos catch. The birds eventually become tame and roam around the family’s house.
Birds are an important symbol of beauty in the novel. In keeping with Bulosan’s juxtaposition of beauty with despair, Carlos experiences both love and sadness by keeping the singing bird that Luciano catches. Carlos’s love for the bird makes its death even more heartbreaking, but the experience teaches Carlos that the experience of love is something worth pursuing, even if it entails great loss along the way.
Themes
Carlos describes his time catching birds with Luciano as “the most pleasant period of [his] life.” He recounts the things his father and brothers have taught him. Father taught him to be kind to animals because of their usefulness on the farm. Leon taught Carlos “to be few of words and to stick to [his] convictions,” as well as to love the earth. Amado taught Carlos the importance of studying, while Macario taught him about people in faraway lands. Luciano taught Carlos about “the beauty of the world” through the birds the brothers caught together. This education from Luciano proves useful to Carlos in later life, when he is “thrown into the world of men” where everything beautiful becomes “touched with ugliness.”
This section exemplifies the way Bulosan finds and cultivates beauty as a means of dispelling despair in the novel. All of Carlos’s brothers teach him important lessons, but particularly important here is the way that Luciano uses birds to teach Carlos about the life-saving value of finding beauty even amidst the despair and turmoil of a peasant’s life. He teaches Carlos that while life is hard and often ugly, the world is full of beauty, and appreciating this beauty is a way to cope with the despair that so often consumes daily life.
Themes
Among the most beautiful birds Luciano and Carlos catch is a parrot. Luciano builds it a cage, and the brothers use it as a decoy to catch other parrots, which they then sell. The money they make allows them to open a small store in Binalonan, from which they help tourists repair automobiles. Luciano, however, begins worrying about his pension from the United States government. He grows sicker but decides to enter politics. Meanwhile, the moneylender takes the last of Father’s land. When Luciano informs Father that he cannot get the land back, Father falls into despair. Luciano is also getting sicker with tuberculosis, and the money he makes repairing cars is not enough to pay back the moneylender.
Once again, despair and suffering follows moments of joy and hope. Even as Luciano and Carlos open a successful automotive repair store, Luciano grows sicker with tuberculosis and his government pension dries up. Father also learns that he can never regain his land. It is yet another familiar cycle of joy and tragedy in Carlos’s young life.
Themes
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Luciano is eventually elected mayor of Binalonan. He continues to discuss life and politics with Carlos, advising him that reading and learning healthy ideas are both “food for the mind.” Luciano suggests to Carlos that he become a journalist. Years later, Carlos remembers the sacrifices his brothers made. “I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words," he vows.
This is another moment of foreshadowing, since Luciano’s suggestion that Carlos become a journalist comes to realization later in the story. Carlos’s brothers ultimately shape the course of his life, and mostly for the better.
Themes
