57 pages • 1 hour read
The Barbarian Nurseries
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Symbols & Motifs
The Tropical Garden
The author uses the Torres-Thompson garden to symbolize Maureen and Scott’s relationship. At first, they have “la petite rainforest,” a large tropical garden which they planted “not long after moving in five years earlier, to fill up the empty quarter acre at the rear of their property” (11). Since they do not live in a tropical climate, it requires constant care from Pepe, the gardener, and lots of water to force it to thrive where it cannot live on its own. This represents a big expense, and as soon as they fire Pepe, the garden starts to die.
Similarly, Scott and Maureen’s relationship was seemingly idyllic when they had the money to spend on things to fill up the large empty space left by their lack of communication with each other. However, facing money constraints, their peaceful relationship starts to wither.
Notably, in Chapter 1, both Maureen and Scott approach the dying rainforest to try to save it. However, Maureen saw the chemicals Pepe used on the garden and “had been frightened off by the bottles and their warning labels” which undermine the sense of purity she treasures (11). Scott, overwhelmed by the work involved, “decided to forget about the tropical garden for the time being because it was in the backyard, after all, and who was going to notice?” The garden, as with their relationship, is too much work for them to tackle.
In their relationship, Maureen’s highest concern is to “protect the family image” and make sure they appear pure and the ideal model of a family (307). She is unwilling to sully this image by confronting their problems with Scott or even by admitting the truth of their argument later when they are in the public spotlight. Scott, on the other hand, is always one to ignore their relationship problems, because it is easier for him. For example, when Maureen broaches the subject of the succulent garden, he barely hears her because he is focused on a video game and “the pull of the game caused him to lean fully to the screen” (87).
It is no coincidence that the replacement of the tropical garden with a desert succulent garden is what brings Maureen and Scott’s relationship issues to the surface. The succulent garden is suited to the climate and is sharp, almost dangerous. There is no way to hide in the succulent garden; there is no pretense anymore.
Barbarians
The author references barbarians throughout the novel, including in the title. As a motif, barbarians most often indicate a separation caused by miscommunication, selfishness, fear, or ignorance. These causes seem to be the main causes of the racial divide in the US today.
The first explicit mention of barbarians is by Maureen; upon seeing the day laborers—all illegal Mexican immigrants—she wonders to herself: “what am I doing, allowing these sweaty barbarians into my home?” (94). She distances herself from these men, not even seeing them as men. Consciously or subconsciously, Maureen and Scott feel separate from, and above, the Mexican Americans in the novel. They do not even know Araceli’s last name. To them, this group are “useful barbarians,” there to take care of the difficult or unpleasant parts of life.
Araceli understand her employers’ prejudice, as evidenced by her observation that “today I am the civilized one and they are the savages” when Scott and Maureen have their physical altercation (114). She feels herself separate from the Torres-Thompsons as much as they feel separate from her. Interestingly, she also feels separate from many of her fellow Mexican immigrants, as she too refers to them as “that first rabble of barbarian gardeners, the men who took machetes to Pepe’s tropical forest” (311).
Interestingly, the novel does not end with understanding between these groups, almost as if the author does not want to tie everything up with a bow. After all, that is not the case in reality today—different groups still look on other groups as barbarians to be feared or removed.
One other character frequently references barbarians or savages: Brandon. When he is imagining a fantastical version of events during their journey, he focuses on a fantasy war. Seeing the homeless city, he imagines “these people are refugees; they are the defeated soldiers and the displaced citizens of the City of Vardur” (166). Later, seeing Tomas’s poor treatment, he concludes that “in fact, he was a slave” (192). Although filtered through a fantastical lens, Brandon is able to recognize the situations he sees for what they are: the result of barbarism. In his innocent, boyish way, he is understanding that only a barbaric system that classifies certain people as less than human would allow such conditions to persist. Having known only a world of comfort and love, he cannot believe that what he is seeing is reality. He has only seen these types of things in fantasy novels, where nothing can hurt him. Notably, at the end of the novel, he is reading Catcher in the Rye and has become more serious. He is beginning to understand that reality is just as “crummy” and frightening as his fantasy worlds.
The Ants
In Part 3, the Torres-Thompson household becomes slowly infested by ants. It starts a few days into the Torres-Thompsons trying to cope without Araceli. Maureen notices “an ant, and she watched it join the flow of one of two serpentine threads that converged on the tile” (338). She does her best to get rid of them, even resorting to chemicals, but “every day they conquered new territories of tile, particleboard, and porcelain” (393). The slow invasion of the ants echoes how the Janet Brysons and Ian Gollers of the world see Mexican immigrants. It is one of the reasons that Maureen decides they need to leave the house, just as there is a slow migration of white families away from areas where Mexican immigrants move in.
Maureen also suspects that Araceli was able to keep them at bay by applying “some potent and probably illegal Third World insecticide” (394). However, the author hints that Araceli kept the ants out simply by drawing a chalk line around all the baseboards—referencing an old wives’ tale that ants will not cross chalk. Unlike Maureen, who wants to eradicate the ants without understanding where they are coming from, Araceli found a safe way to coexist with ants using wisdom passed down through her family, presumably.
The ants also represent the insidious return of all of the small problems in the Torres-Thompson household. Araceli had maintained a kind of balance, and without her, they are helpless to cope with certain aspects of life. Notably, they decide to move from their big, expensive house, downsizing to save money. However, the house that Maureen wants is “a nose more than seven figures and more than he had paid for the house on Paseo Linda Bonita” (411). They are falling back into old spending habits, having confronted none of the root causes of their fight in the first place.
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