And The Earth Did Not Devour Him

“That year was lost to him. At times he tried to remember and, just about when he thought everything was clearing up, he would be at a loss for words.”

These first two sentences set the story’s context: A boy, who remains unnamed throughout the book, tries to remember and piece together the events of a year in his life. Later, he will admit he is unsure whether the year he refers to as “lost” corresponds with a calendar year. Either way, his purpose is to reconstruct his experiences and feelings about a period in his young life that eludes his grasp at the start of the book. He wants to recover words, which are called a “seed of love in the darkness” by Bartolo the poet in the final vignette (138). Though Bartolo says this about the “spoken word” in particular, the implication is that putting experiences into words is an act of love that illuminates a dark world, in this case the world of the Mexican migrant workers (138). This act is especially significant given the marginalization of the community.

“He tried to figure out when that time he had come to call ‘year’ had started. He became aware that he was always thinking and thinking and from this there was no way out. Then he started thinking about how he never thought and this was when his mind would go blank and he would fall asleep. But before falling asleep he saw and heard many things...”

This passage from the opening chapter exemplifies the stream-of-consciousness narrative style. The boy’s confused thoughts are expressed in fused sentences and contradictory sentiments that mirror the disordered state of his memories. The experiences the boy shares throughout the book will follow this stream-of-consciousness format.