Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Distance Between Us, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Physical and Emotional Distances
Abandonment and Betrayal
Poverty, Abuse, and Trauma
Forgiveness and Recognition
Summary
Analysis
Four years after Reyna’s Papi left for the United States—and two years after her Mami left, too—construction at last begins on their family’s “dream house.” Evila gives Papi a piece of her property, and workers begin building the house right next to Evila’s. Though Reyna doesn’t want to live next to Evila, she knows it is her parents’ only option. The workers tear down both the outhouse and the shack where Reyna was born, and though Reyna is sad, Mago urges her to imagine the beautiful home that will take its place.
As ground breaks on the dream house, Mago and her siblings begin, for the first time, to see the place’s potential. Before their parents left, they were so desperate to keep them that they insisted none of them needed the dream house—now that it is about to become a reality, though, the children are getting excited about the idea of having a real home of their own.
Themes
As construction continues, Reyna and her siblings pitch in and help the bricklayers. They are tired and sore at the end of each day, but the thought of living together with their parents again gives them strength. Soon, though, the workers stop coming—the money has run out, and the house will have to wait. Mago becomes angry, and tells her siblings that the house will never be finished—and neither will their parents return to them.
Just as the children begin to get into the spirit and even lend their efforts towards the dream house’s completion, the project is stopped in its tracks—the children’s high spirits are dashed as they begin to worry that their dreams will never come true, and that their parents will work forever for nothing.
Themes
