61 pages • 2 hours read
The Tortilla Curtain
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Themes
Prejudice, Xenophobia, and Implicit Bias
The Tortilla Curtain follows Delaney Mossbacher’s transformation from a self-proclaimed “liberal humanist” to a man consumed by racist anger. Under the influence of the anti-immigrant sentiment of his friends and neighbors, Delaney’s descent into paranoia shows how prejudice and xenophobia breed hostility. Throughout the novel, Delaney’s fear of losing his comfortable middle-class life transforms into an ugly hatred, illustrating the tendency of the white upper-middle class to jealously guard their power and status, even at the risk of losing their humanity.
Despite Delaney’s claim to progressive ideals, he exhibits racial implicit biases from the beginning that lead to prejudice. Knowing nothing about Cándido besides the fact that he is Latino, Delaney comes to a host of negative conclusions about the man, assuming that he is camping in the canyon, “dumping his trash behind rocks, polluting the stream and ruining it for everyone else” (11). Even when he reminds himself that Cándido is not necessarily a criminal “just because he spoke Spanish” (11), he does not really believe it, scoffing, “Yeah, sure. And Delaney was the King of Siam” (12). Delaney spends the first half of the novel trying to repress his racism. However, as the novel progresses, he stops trying to check himself and leans into his prejudice. With the death of Kyra’s dogs, the theft of his car, and the close call of the fire, Delaney feels “like a victim,” worried about the threat to “his canyon, his house, his life” (322). Surrounded by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his neighbors, he places the blame on Cándido, who comes to represent the nebulous threat of the other in Delaney’s mind.
Much of Delaney’s paranoia is due to the influence of his neighbors. Their relentless talk of violence and crime seems to genuinely surprise and frighten Delaney, who becomes more susceptible to their rhetoric as he feels more threatened. Throughout the novel, the gate and wall around Arroyo Blanco symbolize the fear and hatred within the community. After hearing Jack Jr. and a friend make crude, racist jokes about Mexican girls, Delaney reflects that the wall is “poison”; it traps the hatred and bigotry inside, letting it grow and fester. However, Delaney himself becomes proof of this proclamation as his obsession with Cándido and the graffiti on the gate surpasses the zeal of even the most outspoken wall supporters.
Cándido, for his part, understands that people like Delaney are afraid of him. He knows the gate around Arroyo Blanco exists to keep people like him out, but he is not coming for their upper-middle-class lifestyle. He is not “resentful” or “envious.” All he wants is “steady work” and a small apartment for his family. He is shocked by Delaney’s vehement hatred at the end of the novel. While he does experience significant frustration with the injustice of being denied “basic human necessities,” Cándido does not develop the same all-consuming anger as Delaney. In the end, Cándido reaches for Delaney’s hand in the water, suggesting that his humanity is significantly more intact than Delaney’s and that hatred is more damning than being hated.
The Contradictions of the American Dream
The Tortilla Curtain contrasts the romanticized image of the American Dream with the less glamorous reality. The stark economic disparity between the Mossbachers and Rincóns, as well as the racism and xenophobia directed at Cándido and América, undermines the myth of the United States as a land of equal opportunity. The novel explores how marginalized people are often treated as undeserving, not only of hallmarks of the American Dream like a house and car but of basic necessities like food and water.
América has perhaps the most romanticized image of the United States. She arrives expecting a place where “everyone, even the poorest, had a house, a car and a TV” (26), and is shocked to find white people begging and competing with her for jobs. It is unbelievable to her that Mary, “a gringa in her own country” (60), is also looking for work at the labor exchange. Cándido, who has worked in the United States seasonally for years, is more disillusioned, knowing that “he’d held up the lure” of what the United States has to offer to convince América to come while leaving out some of the scrappier details (29). He understands that the United States is only a free country “as long as you’re a gringo” (204).
This distinction becomes clear as América and Mary work together at Jim Shirley’s. Returning home, Shirley drops Mary off at “a cottage” that is “in need of paint, but [is] fine, charming even” (99), while América returns to her camp in the ravine after suffering the violation of Shirley’s uninvited hand on her thigh. Her position as an undocumented immigrant guarantees her a social status well below that of the poor but white Mary. In fact, América often feels she is worse off in the United States than in Mexico, undermining the myth of the United States as the definitive land of opportunity. However, the lure of the American Dream is powerful enough to pull her out of her deepest depression. Even after Socorro is born and she demands to return to Mexico, América feels the draw of possibility, reflecting that the United States is “a beautiful place” and that there is “peace [t]here if only she could find it” (336).
However, even wealthy families like the Mossbachers feel the pull of the unfulfilled American Dream. By most measures, Kyra has achieved the American Dream. She has a successful career, a beautiful home, and a healthy family. Even so, she is a workaholic who barely spends time with her son and dreams of living in a bigger, more expensive house. In this respect, the Da Ros house represents the perpetually unattainable promise of something better. It is a bigger house, higher on the hill, making Arroyo Blanco look as insignificant as “some sort of fungus attached to the flank of the mountain” (77). The American Dream, the novel suggests, driven by capitalism and consumerism, is illusory by design.
Colonization of/and the Natural World
The theme of colonization of/and the natural world parallels and supports The Tortilla Curtain’s exploration of migration and anti-immigrant sentiment. The residents of Arroyo Blanco are all “recent transplants” living somewhere that was, until recently, wilderness. Therefore, how these characters interact with nature highlights the irony of their anti-immigrant rhetoric. The sentiment that immigrants are outsiders who don’t belong in the United States is undermined by Arroyo Blanco’s own “encroachment” on the natural world, particularly Delaney and Kyra’s battle with the “natives” of the hills: the coyotes.
Delaney, “the naturalist,” is especially oblivious to his effect on the natural world, which reveals his hypocrisy and the emptiness of his values. He claims to care about conservation and protecting the environment; however, he lives in a brand-new subdivision that took considerable resources to build and destroyed natural habitats in the process. He takes great pride in his “freshly waxed Japanese car” (3) and writes about nature from “the comfort of [his] air-conditioned office” (221). He condemns Cándido and other “Mexicans” for “camping” in the state park, “polluting the stream and ruining it for everyone else” (11). This perceived harm to the environment makes Delaney furious and becomes one of the biggest excuses behind his racist “crusade” as the novel progresses.
The stream where Cándido and América camp is undeniably polluted, with “a thin yellowish film” on the surface that makes Cándido sick within hours of drinking it (88). However, Cándido notes another source of pollution, asking América if she could “even begin to imagine how many septic fields drained off of those mountains” and into the canyon stream (56). Card-carrying Sierra Club members like Delaney have a much bigger impact on the environment than people like Cándido and América, and the polluted stream represents another instance of Delaney’s unwillingness to square the realities of his comfortable existence with his proclaimed values.
In the end, nature is the one force in the novel that does not discriminate. The Tortilla Curtain ends with two back-to-back natural disasters that illustrate how inconsequential the differences are between Cándido and Delaney. With the threat of the fire, the Mossbachers’ privilege allows them to escape in their car with their most cherished possessions while the Rincóns literally run for their lives. However, Delaney feels for the first time what it would be like to lose everything, and he channels this fear and hate into his hunt for Cándido. In the flood and mudslide, the two men are finally equals. Even with “the money-back guarantee” on his “High Sierra lightweight hiking boots with the half-inch tread” (355), Delaney is sucked into the mudslide just like Cándido, América, and little Socorro. The fact that the mudslide is in part the result of the way the ravine’s ecosystem has been altered by colonization from wealthy white suburbanites like Delaney brings a sense of poetic justice to the final scene.
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