39 pages • 1 hour read
The Tattooed Soldier
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: "Antonio and the Sergeant"
Chapter 1 Summary: “On Crown Hill”
Chapter 1 begins with an intense argument between protagonist Antonio Bernal and his apartment manager, a Korean man whom Antonio knows as Hwang. Their dispute is exacerbated by the fact that neither man speaks fluent English. Antonio reflects that this problem is due to the nature of Los Angeles, where it is possible for someone like himself to speak his native language, Spanish, most of the time.
The men are arguing because Antonio is being evicted that very night. Antonio notices his glasses in the mirror, and this reminds him of his intellectual distinction. In Guatemala 10 years ago he was a student, but now others jokingly call him “professor” because of the contrast between his educated appearance and his current economic plight.
Antonio pleads with Hwang, saying he will be homeless because of Hwang’s actions. Hwang tells Antonio the police will be called to expedite the eviction. As the dispute drags on, neighbors gather in the corridors of the apartment building. Antonio is aware that in this poor and often dangerous area, a disaster or spectacle is the only thing that can really draw the neighbors together. His dispute with Hwang thus ranks alongside sordid and tragic events like a death, an accident, a domestic dispute, or a fire.
The neighbors are commenting on the proceedings, and the narration notes that while Antonio uses the manager’s correct name, others merely call him “Chang” or “el chino” (Spanish for Chinese). While Antonio argues Hwang, he and his roommate José Juan are also trying to gather their belongings into a trash bag. They have not packed because they have nowhere to go. They have already spent a long time arguing over whether to keep their hot plate; José Juan insists that it is useful, but Antonio points out that they will be homeless with nowhere to plug it in.
While gathering his things in the short time remaining, Antonio uncovers a photo of his wife and son. Overwhelmed with emotion, Antonio lashes out and rips the manager’s shirt. The crowd breaks them up, and Antonio and José Juan leave.
The roommates proceed to the freeway. Antonio feels invisible and inferior as they make their way along the sidewalk. They jump a cyclone fence and head toward the land below a large interchange. There they encounter an area of makeshift shelters. It seems as if 20 or 30 people live there, but they are quickly run off by some of the squatters.
They next find a vacant lot on a muddy hill overlooking downtown that is also covered with tents and shelters. They decide to camp in this area, and Antonio spends a sleepless night listening to the talk of junkies and prostitutes. In the morning Antonio learns that José Juan has been exploring. He has discovered an area where the remains of a house are still present in the ground. He decides that they should make their shelter here. They notice that there are about 40 such devastated lots, and Antonio wonders what caused their destruction.
Standing in their new dwelling, Antonio realizes that this moment parallels a previous moment in his life, when he was fleeing his “horrible” village after witnessing the slain bodies of his wife and child. Waiting for the bus to escape, a neighbor hurriedly pushed him to avoid a man nearby. That man, whom Antonio clearly saw, was a plainclothes soldier eating ice cream. Antonio made eye contact with the man, who looked away. This encounter, and the process of flight, made Antonio feel like a coward.
Chapter 2 Summary: "El Pulgarcito Express"
This chapter introduces Guillermo Longoria, a former soldier of the Jaguar Battalion of the Guatemalan Army. He enters the main narrative in the context of his attention to order in his home. Longoria cleans his house exhaustively; he scrubs the floors by hand and takes the trash out every morning, no matter how little it contains. Longoria feels this keeps him above his neighbors who accept the squalor of their environment.
Longoria is very proud of his past; he trained at Fort Bragg and has been the subject of newspaper reports about his exploits in Guatemala. He possesses a photo album that he often revisits, which containing pictures from his military service. It includes several battlefield photos, but Longoria rarely looks at these.
Longoria has little in his apartment, but he does have a collection of books. These include chess books and self-help books by Dr. Wayne García. Longoria feels García’s books have taught him to control his inner urges. They have made him more self-disciplined, and Longoria wishes he had read them earlier in his life.
Longoria is disgusted by much of what he sees in Los Angeles, especially in his neighborhood. He is particularly disturbed by AIDS and fears contracting the disease by stepping on a needle. The heroin junkies who live in the alleys around his apartment compound his fear. His only close encounter with these people came when he realized they were watching television in one of their shelters. He noticed that their cable led to his apartment building, and he tore the cord at the risk of electrocuting himself.
His place of work, El Pulgarcito Express, is a shipping company where Latinos send letters and packages back to friends and family in Latin America. An angry customer whose money order was stolen confronts Longoria at work. He knows that one of the employees stole it, but not which one. Stealing is routine at his company, and Longoria’s job is to turn away angry customers who have been swindled. He likes the job, preferring it to the labor jobs available to most immigrants. He describes it to people as a “service sector” job, and he acquired his position because of his military service. The owner, William Duarte, is a right-wing Salvadoran and sympathizes with Longoria.
The chapter shifts to Sunday night, when Longoria is at his apartment with a woman named Reginalda. She does not seem to be a serious girlfriend, but they have been seeing one another for several months. Their relationship is regimented like the rest of Longoria’s life: They see each other roughly once a week for dates, and then end the night at his apartment making love. Reginalda is seemingly a frivolous and superficial yet happy woman.
After they make love, Longoria recalls how he joined the army. It was not voluntary. While running errands in town for his peasant mother, young Guillermo made a detour to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During the movie soldiers entered and separated those who had served in the military from those who had not. Though Guillermo was under 18 and ineligible for duty, the soldiers used the opportunity to simply abduct him.
Chapter 3 Summary: "Instant Shelter"
The novel returns to Antonio, who is beginning to experience intense hunger. José Juan, who bursts with energy, has begun building a shelter from scavenged plastic sheets. Antonio, meanwhile, is unwilling to move or search for food. His mind dwells on his wife Elena rather than his immediate plight. Frustrated with his friend’s complacency, José Juan insists that they search for food.
When the two return, they see a man rummaging in their poorly hidden trash bag. Antonio attacks the man violently, which disturbs José Juan because the man is old and weak.
The two make friends at the encampment. They meet Frank, a black man who used to live on Skid Row. He provides advice, such as where to find free water. He introduces them to “the Mayor,” a homeless activist who has some lawsuits in progress against the city.
From Antonio’s observation of José Juan, we learn that this man also has a family that he left behind. His wife and children live in Mexico, and due to his homelessness José Juan has been unable to send them money. Nevertheless, he is optimistic about escaping from homelessness and he builds the shelter in optimistic spirits.
Antonio reflects on how he had hoped things would go well for him in Los Angeles. However, between balancing work and English classes, he faltered and never progressed. He was not well suited for restaurant work and found himself selling oranges and other things on the roadside for very low wages. He feels that his wife would be “horrified” by him as he exists now.
Antonio is horrified by the fact that he cannot remember the date of his wife and son’s deaths. He does remember that it happened roughly seven years ago, three years after he married Elena. He also remembers that Elena was killed three weeks after she wrote a letter criticizing the conditions of the slum outside their village in Guatemala.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
These first few chapters establish that the two central characters are in a very similar plight. Both Antonio and Longoria are effectively exiled from their country, and both are on the low end of the American social spectrum. Longoria is essentially a hired thug for Duarte, while Antonio is a former intellectual who is ill-suited for life in Los Angeles and has become homeless. Longoria, used to being powerful, tries to control his new life by maintaining a routine as well as emotional distance from others; Antonio is more sociable but also subject to fits of malaise because of his past trauma. While Longoria’s relationship with Reginalda demonstrates that at some level he desires love, Antonio’s attack on the homeless man shows that he has pent-up anger and a willingness to harm others who harm him.
The characters are depicted as having only a limited understanding of American culture and history, just as they do not have a very strong grasp of English. For example, when they encounter the abandoned homes, Antonio assumes that some sort of disaster took place. However, the way in which the homes have been leveled (Antonio notices the palm trees were spared) suggests that they were deliberately razed, probably as part of the city’s development. Feeling puzzled by such mysterious features of the city highlights Antonio’s status as a displaced person. In Chapter 1 it is apparent that the good-natured José Juan adapts more readily than Antonio. He is less intelligent than Antonio, but he has suffered less trauma and is less reflective; therefore, he is not burdened by the same dark thoughts as Antonio.
The mention of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial dates Longoria’s abduction by the army to roughly 1982, though it is possible the movie released later in Guatemala. This anecdote demonstrates that much of Longoria’s life was out of his control because he was kidnapped at a young age and forced into service. His highly regimented lifestyle could be a habit from his time as a soldier or a coping mechanism to regain a sense of control.
Characters like Frank and the Mayor demonstrate that society’s prevailing notions about the homeless are not necessarily correct. Though there is likely some reason for their circumstances, they are not homeless simply due to laziness, addiction, or insanity. The Mayor’s lawsuits against the city show that the homeless can stand up for themselves and be involved in the political process, which humanizes them as complex individuals who are engaged with their communities.
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