Beauty in Despair Theme Analysis

America is in the Heart is a semi-autobiographical novel by Filipino-American novelist Carlos Bulosan. It tells the story of his early life in the Philippines and his immigration to America, where he becomes a writer after a lifetime of struggle. During Carlos’s life, he endures constant despair, but he is able to overcome this despair by appreciating the beauty in the world. Born into the peasantry in a small Filipino village, Carlos immigrates to America to pursue a better life. The racism, violence, and discrimination he endures at the hands of white Americans, however, causes Carlos to succumb to a violent life of crime, vice, and anger. Nonetheless, finding beauty amidst despair eventually inspires Carlos to move past this violence and instead pursue the positive goal of being a writer and thus contributing to the betterment of humanity.

In the novel’s first part, Bulosan details his early life as a Filipino peasant. For Carlos’s family, poverty produces starvation, beggary, and humiliation that leads to much despair. The marriage of Carlos’s brother, Leon, for example, goes from joyous to despairing when the wedding party savagely beats Leon’s bride after learning that she is not a virgin. This “cruel custom” turns a celebration of love into a cause for suffering. Carlos’s mother also endures the suffering and humiliation of the peasant life. She travels by foot to sell food, which ravages her body and forces her to cross dangerous rivers. At one village, a rich girl calls his mother a “poor woman” and spills her jar of beans. This constant pain and abuse shows just how physically and emotionally difficult Carlos’s and his family’s lives are in the Philippines. Additionally, when Carlos’s father loses his farmland to the moneylender, Carlos writes that this “family tragedy…marked the beginning of my conscious life.” Tragedy, then, is not merely a feature of Carlos’s life—it entirely defines his existence. For Carlos and his family, poverty casts a cloud of despair that makes day-to-day life very difficult to endure.

Despite such despair, however, Carlos’s family is able to survive by embracing the beauty of their family bonds. “If there was one redeeming quality in our poverty,” he writes, “it was this boundless affinity for each other, this humanity that grew in each of us.” Carlos emphasizes how family ties are a source of beauty in a poverty-ridden lifestyle where despair is a constant threat. The close relationship between Carlos and his brother, Luciano, embodies how family ties provide a sense of beauty amidst an arduous existence. Luciano teaches Carlos to catch birds and appreciate them “for the esthetic pleasure we found in observing them.” Carlos calls this time with Luciano “the most pleasant period of my life” that “finally led me to an appreciation of beauty—that drove me with a burning desire to find beauty and goodness in the world.” Appreciating beauty allows Carlos to recognize the value of happiness, even amidst extreme material deprivation.

Carlos and his family seek a better life in America, but there he endures racial discrimination and economic exploitation, which strains his former ability to see the beauty in life. Carlos experiences how white Americans’ racism forces Filipinos into the worst jobs and neighborhoods (he calls one such neighborhood an “island of despair”). Racism also subjects the family to violent harassment and denies them citizenship. Systematic discrimination fosters despair in many Filipinos, who embrace their lot as a despised caste and waste their lives in gambling joints, whorehouses, and bars. Others, like Carlos’s brother, Amado, turn to crime. Prejudice drives Filipinos to “hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom.” Carlos believes it is unnatural “to run from goodness and beauty.” However, it is hard to find beauty in a society rife with violence and exploitation. Carlos struggles to avoid the fate of many Filipinos who surrender to despair and therefore endure lives of crime, vice, misery, and anger because they believe life in America offers few positive alternatives.

Despite enduring discrimination as a Filipino in America, Carlos manages to find beauty in his experiences. This beauty sustains him and helps him realize his dream of becoming a writer. Faced with so much suffering and despair, he longs for “a life of goodness and beauty,” so he focuses on the positive opportunities America offers. Literacy is a source of beauty, and reading and writing provide Carlos with a positive outlet because it offers him a path out of the pain that other people’s ignorance causes. He is “seized with happiness” when he learns to write in English, and vows to tell his story as a Filipino immigrant. Moreover, writing leads him to the positive ideals of progressive journalism and labor organizing, both of which he believes will improve the lives of Filipinos in American society. Additionally, the union movement introduces Carlos to the people who become like a surrogate family to him and serve as an extension of the family bonds he cherished in the Philippines. Carlos also views women as a source of beauty in his life, both for their physical appearances and because they nurture him and provide him opportunities to fulfill his dreams. He meets a variety of kind-hearted women throughout his life, including As a child, Carlos meets Mary Strandon, a librarian who introduces him to literature, and Alice and Eileen Odell, who care for Carlos as he recovers in the hospital from tuberculosis, share books with him, and become his close confidants. Writing, discovering a community of like-minded people, and developing relationships with women who care about him are all factors that allow Carlos to reconnect to the inherent beauty and goodness in life, effectively lifting him out of his despair as an oppressed immigrant and allowing him to pursue a positive path as a writer.

Throughout America is in the Heart, Carlos is able to find the beauty amidst even the most harrowing despair. The poverty of Carlos’s peasant origins, as well as in the rampant exploitation and oppression that he experiences in America are constant sources of despair in his life. By finding beauty in relationships, nature, education, and higher ideals, Bulosan avoids the life of crime and vice to which so many other Filipinos succumb. Focusing on the beauty in the world fuels his desire to become a writer who makes a positive contribution to the world.