Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Zoot Suit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Nationalism, and Scapegoating
Self-Presentation and Cultural Identity
Public Perception and the Press
Advocates vs. Saviors
Summary
Analysis
As the party continues, a member of the press enters with a cart full of newspaper stacks. The partiers freeze as the journalist announces the date (October 12, 1942) and says, “Headlines!” Hearing this, the members of the 38th Street Gang take turns reciting headlines before walking offstage. At first, the news stories are about international politics and World War II, but soon they begin to fixate on the country’s Chicano population with headlines like “Web of Zoot Crime Spreads” and “Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial Opens Tomorrow.”
Once again, Valdez emphasizes the ever-presence of the news media, making it clear that Henry and his friends live in a society inundated by publications that seek out scandal and gossip. By calling attention to “Zoot Crime,” the newspapers associate the Chicano community with unlawfulness and illicit behavior.
Themes
The scene returns to the present. As Henry sits in his jail cell, George enters with Alice Bloomfield, who introduces herself to Henry as a reporter. Jumping in, George tells Henry that Alice is one of the people working hard to help clear his name. Uninterested, Henry tells George that he hasn’t received clean clothes yet, even though George sent clothes to the jail. Frustrated, George goes to see about this discrepancy, leaving Alice and Henry alone. Taking this opportunity, Alice says she’d like to ask Henry some questions, explaining—when Henry shows some hesitance—that she wants to correct the narrative that the rest of the press has advanced about him and his friends (and about the Chicano community in general).
Like George, Alice is a white person who—unlike people like Edwards, Smith, and the majority of the news media—wants to support the Chicano community. Once again, though, Henry is skeptical, since very few white people have ever showed any interest in uplifting him and his friends. In fact, the only person who has claimed to help him is Lieutenant Edwards, who worked with him to establish a “youth group” but then villainized him and his friends for being in a gang. In turn, it’s quite understandable that Henry would be weary of accepting support from supposedly well-meaning white people.
Themes
Alice tells Henry that other newspapers are linking “the Pachuco Crime Wave” to fascism and spreading other absurd rumors. She also points out that these stories—and the entire idea of a “Mexican Crime Wave”—were cooked up by a newspaper owner who simply wants to sell papers. This, she claims, is the reason Henry and his friends are in jail. Nonetheless, Henry tells Alice to leave him alone, so she tries once again to endear herself to him, this time deciding to begin again by saying that she and many other people are on Henry’s side. She also says that she grew up in Los Angeles but never heard about or encountered the Chicano community, which is why she’s eager to learn about Henry and his friends. This piques Henry’s interest, and though he remains on his guard, he asks what, exactly, she wants to know.
What Alice says about the press associating Henry and his friends with fascism is important, since it reveals that the media is exploiting the country’s wartime fears to turn the public against the Chicano community. By sowing this kind of fear, the newspapers hope to turn bigger profits, knowing that alarming headlines will attract more readers. On another note, Alice manages to put Henry at ease by demonstrating her desire to actually listen to what he has to say. This, the audience sees, is what effective white allies do: they pay attention to people of color in respectful, receptive ways.
Themes
Henry talks to Alice about his life, discussing the fact that he’s been arrested multiple times on suspicion and that these unfair arrests have remained on his record. Alice then calls Henry a “classic social victim”—a term that Henry dismisses, calling it “bullshit.” In response, Alice asks if he’s saying he’s guilty of the Sleepy Lagoon murder, and he tells her that, though he’s done bad things in his life, he didn’t do this. Just then, George storms in and says that the jail is purposefully withholding the clothes he sent for Henry and his friends. He will, he says, have to mention this in court. Turning back to Henry, Alice tells him that she believes he’s innocent and urges him to bear in mind when he’s on trial that there are people who support him.
Henry opens up to Alice because he sees that she genuinely wants to support him on his own terms. However, this doesn’t mean she’s a perfect white ally, as evidenced by the fact that she gets carried away with abstract social theories that ultimately do little to help Henry. This happens when Alice suggests that Henry is a “classic social victim,” an idea Henry dismisses not only because it’s irrelevant to his current predicament, but also because it patronizingly casts him as a perfect person with no agency. Rather than acknowledging that Henry is a person who is—like everyone—fallible, Alice tries to present him as a flawless person who simply has no control over what happens to him. Henry’s response that Alice’s assessment of him is “bullshit” suggests that life is more complicated than this, and that people shouldn’t need to think of others as completely unimpeachable in order to believe that they deserve justice.
Themes
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