Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Trash, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Childhood, Poverty, and Injustice
Corruption, Power, and Theft
Community, Loyalty, and Solidarity
Intelligence, Education, and Street Smarts
Summary
Analysis
Frederico Gonz, a man who makes gravestones, narrates on Father Juilliard’s request. Graves for the poor are stacked on top of each other like boxes, so the stone seals the box closed. Gonz remembers José Angelico from the burial of José’s son. When José showed up, looking gaunt and thin, to say his daughter had died, Gonz didn’t suspect anything—he only felt pity for the poor man who had nobody left in the world. José had asked for a stone that read “Pia Dante Angelico: seeds to my harvest, my child. It is accomplished.” There was nobody but José at the funeral but they put the coffin in and sealed it up. When Gonz heard that José had been killed, he said a prayer for him.
Gonz’s sadness for José Angelico reinforces the idea of a sense of community and empathy among the city’s underprivileged. Meanwhile, Pia Dante’s gravestone contains similar language as Angelico’s letter to Olondriz (“seeds,” “harvest,” “it is accomplished”), which implies that the grave, too, may be a code for something related to Angelico’s stolen fortune.
Themes
A page from the Star Extra newspaper reports that the investigation to recover Senator Zapanta’s money continues, while Zapanta (who denies all charges) is in court for a trial on his subsidiary company “Feed Us!” It collapsed in debt and it was responsible for a rice price hike. A page from the Inquirer newspaper reports that the “much-loved” vice-president is in “despair,” and that Senator Zapanta became famous a few years ago for clearing “squatters” to build a shopping complex, campaigning against illiteracy using unpaid orphans, and shrinking his education budget by 18 percent. A page from the Daily Star wonders how the Senator could have been stockpiling millions in his house in the first place. Similarly, a University Voice article accuses Zapanta of corruption (for hoarding money) and it calls for revolution.
The newspaper articles provide tangible examples of Zapanta’s theft and corruption: it’s evident that Zapanta has displaced the poor, used unpaid child labor, stolen education funding, set up bogus companies, and raised taxes on basic necessities for the poor. The articles also show that José Angelico’s theft has even wider implications for society, since it exposes Zapanta’s hoarding to the public it thus gives people cause to question Zapanta’s leadership. José Angelico’s theft, thus, cleverly completes the task that Gabriel Olondriz started: it exposes Zapanta’s corruption and it weakens his power.
Themes
