Consumerism and Environmental Destruction Theme Analysis

In Under the Feet of Jesus, a Latino family of migrant workers ekes out an existence in rural California. Given their lack of economic resources, the family relies on the natural world for both shelter and sustenance; their understanding of the environment allows them to survive and emphasizes their lack of consumption of material goods. The family’s respect for the natural world contrasts with the agricultural industry’s rampant exploitation of the land, especially their use of pesticides, in order to produce more and more consumer goods. A motif throughout the novel, pesticide use and its consequences show that environmental integrity and public health are inextricably linked, and provide another indictment against commercial farming practices.

Estrella and her family are characterized by their ability to live within the environment, rather than relying on consumer goods. In the novel’s opening scenes, the family arrives and settles at a broken-down bungalow. Using only what they have with them and what they can find in nature, they transform the shack into a temporary home. At one point, Petra even remarks that “horsetail weed” is “just as good for scouring as steel wool,” underlining the fact that when she faces a problem she turns to nature, rather than going to the store.

While the novel’s tone is often clipped and tense, its descriptions of nature are loving and lyrical. As Alejo is stealing peaches from a tree, for example, he remarks eloquently on the “resinous branches” and the wasps’ legs which “dangled like golden threads.” Language like this emphasizes how precious the environment is—especially to young people like Estrella and Alejo, who have few material pleasures or luxuries.

Of course, it’s important that the family’s ingenuity and lack of consumption is also a matter of necessity, not choice. At one point, Petra encapsulates her dream of a better life by saying she’d like to be the kind of person who “knows where the Nescafé is” in the supermarket. The novel praises Estrella’s family for its respect for the environment, but in the sense that Petra and Estrella often reference consumer goods when discussing their own deprivation, consumption also represents the class inequities they face every day.

By contrast, the commercial farms the family works for are exploiting the environment in order to produce more and more consumer goods. Commercial farming is necessary to produce the cheap goods on which, during this era, America is becoming more and more reliant. Even though Estrella is unable to afford those goods, she’s cognizant that her work makes possible a culture of consumption: while drying grapes into raisins, she imagines the branded packaging under which they’ll eventually be sold.

Large-scale farming can be harmful to the environment in many ways, but the novel focuses on one particular factor: the use of pesticides. Viramontes frequently references the biplanes that spray the fields—and everything around them—with chemicals. Consequently, Estrella is unable to trust the environment in which she is so thoroughly rooted. In one passage, she’s looking thirstily at a stream with her friend Maxine, but because they know the water is contaminated, neither girl drinks. At another moment, Estrella mentions wiping pesticides off a juicy tomato before biting into it. In both cases, evocative natural descriptions—from the burbling stream to the ripe fruit—contrast with the contamination and danger caused by commercial farming practices. In this context, even positive descriptions of the environment create a threatening and uneasy atmosphere.

Instances in which characters directly suffer from pesticide contamination show the connection between environmental degradation and public health; they also turn the metaphor of consumption on its head, showing that commercial farming consumes people as much as it allows others to consume. Petra and Estrella worry constantly about giving birth to deformed babies; in particular, they reference a phenomenon of babies being born without mouths due to pesticide contamination. This fear shows that it’s important to safeguard the environment not just for its own sake, but to protect public health. The grotesque idea of mouth-less babies is also important because it highlights their literal inability to consume (not to mention have their own voice). This image emphasizes that in order to give middle-class consumers access to a wide variety of cheap goods, some people forfeit their right to consume any goods at all.

Alejo’s encounter with the pesticide biplane—triggering an illness from which he never recovers—is one of the novel’s most tragic moments. He describes the poisonous spray as “swallowing his waist and torso,” “squeezing his chest and crushing his ribs,” and finally “erasing him.” Here, Viramontes uses the language of consumption to show how the pesticides are literally obliterating Alejo. This moment is a powerful foil to the cheerful advertising imagery used to make goods like fruit attractive to consumers. It also makes an important connection between the environment and the people who work it, both of whom are preyed upon by pesticides in order to facilitate the material consumption of more privileged classes.

Throughout the novel, poignant descriptions of the striking California environment contrast with the commercial farming industry’s exploitation of that environment, especially through pesticide use. These clashing motifs bring attention to the environmental degradation that often accompanies the production of cheap consumer goods and argue that, like the environment, agricultural workers are “consumed” by pesticides in order to allow other people to consume material goods—ultimately making a connection between environmental and social justice.