The Barbarian Nurseries

One of three main protagonists, Scott is Maureen’s husband and Araceli’s employer. A computer programmer, he had founded the startup MindWare with Sasha “the Big Man” Avakian. The company eventually failed, and Scott had to sell it and go back to working for someone else. This failure comes to determine Scott’s self-worth, and he knows that they cannot afford their present lifestyle. However, he does not communicate this to Maureen.

Scott is trying to escape his past and upbringing in a lower middle-class neighborhood, the son of a Mexican immigrant. However, he cannot fully escape as he still feels that “his God, part penny-pinching Protestant and part vengeful Catholic, would wreak holy retribution against him and his wife for wanting too much” (24).

When he drives home to visit his old neighborhood, he realizes how poor he truly was. He is trying to escape what he sees as the shame of being poor, in part due to the fact that his early success with MindWare exposed him to a very wealthy segment of society. Even after the failure of the company, the Big Man is still seemingly incredibly rich. It is no coincidence that Maureen’s spending on the succulent garden—which will put them into debt—triggers Scott’s anger and violence.

Scott ultimately feels bad about Araceli’s plight and refuses to testify against her.

One of the three main characters in the story, Maureen is Scott’s wife and Araceli’s employer at the outset of the novel. Now a stay-at-home mom after the failure of MindWare, Maureen does sometimes admit that she is in good company with people “who could throw money at their insecurities.”

She feels somewhat powerless and underappreciated in her role, while Scott is the breadwinner. She begins the major movements of the plot by spending an exorbitant amount of money on a succulent garden. She knows her family is in financial distress, but her need to keep up appearances is so great that she spends the money anyway. This trend continues at the end of the novel when she wants to purchase a house for more than the cost of their current home.

Like Scott and Araceli, Maureen is running from her past, which includes an abusive father and difficult homelife. For this reason, she is especially terrified by the threat of CPS and the thought that they might declare her a negligent mother. This dark past is why Maureen’s main concern is to “protect the family image” (307). She does not want others to see her in the same light as her own family. However, she does not communicate this well with anyone, including Scott. 

The eldest of the three Torres-Thompson siblings at 11, Brandon is an avid reader with a vivid imagination. His view of the world is fantastical, based on the many books he has read. When Araceli takes him and his brother into LA, he interprets everything he sees through this imaginative lens. For example, he sees homeless people as the “defeated soldiers and displaced citizens of the City of Vardur” from one of his post-apocalyptic books (166). As Araceli puts it, Brandon “saw fantasy and wonderment in everything new” (311). She learns this from him, and in this way, he is instrumental in her own character development.

It is only near the end of their journey that he starts to feel frightened and alone, and to wish to go home. The journey obviously affects him as well, as he has moved on from his fantasy books to Catcher in the Rye by the end. 

The middle Torres-Thompson child, Keenan is 8 during the main events of the novel. Although he is also intelligent and an avid reader, he is more serious than his elder brother. He is the first to feel like they are “lost as two boys separated from their parents on a busy street” (137).

Notably, while Brandon is imagining fantastical backstories for what they see, Keenan notices the very poor and homeless people who get on the bus and comprehends for the first time what his mother means when she tells him “there are a lot of needy, hungry people in this world” (173). However, the people in charge generally don’t ask him what happened, deferring instead to the older Brandon.

Ian Goller is “a third-ranking member of the district attorney’s office” who has come to despise illegal Mexican immigrants (254). He believes “naïve Latin American immigrants” like Araceli clog up the court system and keep him from doing his job (256). For this reason, he makes it his personal mission in Part 3 to press charges against Araceli, with the ultimate goal of having her deported. He even goes so far as to ignore evidence in pursuit of what he believes is the greater good. In the end, he does not grow out of this mindset, but set his sites on the next case and the next Mexican immigrant he can make an example of, since “the math suggested it would happen again soon” (403).

Araceli’s public defender is Ruthy Bacalan-Howland, who is heavily pregnant but no less imposing. She is the one who tells Araceli to refuse the plea deal and fight for change. Still, when Araceli wins her release, Ruthy is almost surprised at the tiny miracle, which “hardly ever happens” (412).