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T. Coraghessan Boyle: The Tortilla Curtain
and keeping them miserable.
For the innocent Amйrica, the American dream is just what Cбndido glorified it of being, even though neither him nor anyone he knows have achieved it. Being young and naпve, she follows her older husband to the country where everyone can become rich. As time goes by she gets more and more sceptical. As she is out looking for job she sees a gabacho beggar on the sidewalk and thinks: “if he [has] to beg in his own country, what chance [is] there for her” (19). That makes it obvious that she had the idea of that everyone, at least all the natives, had or could get a job. As time passes by she realize more and more about the truth, the truth that Cбndido had not spoke of before they went. When they are fleeing from a big fire, caused by Cбndido, he asks her: “You want to die?” and she answers “Yes, I do” (277). And later during that same fire she has to give birth to their baby behind some house, where there is no water, no electricity, and no one qualified to help her. That is when she has enough, and she “wanted to cry for her mother, for Tepoztlбn, for everything she’d left behind” (282). She realize that the American dream is something that is not so easy to achieve, at least not as an illegal immigrant, and she did not want to live on food that other people had thrown away, begging, or living like an animal in the canyons. She could live a much more worthy life than that in Tepoztlбn. The young and innocent Amйrica is a victim of the glorified fairytales about America, told to her by her husband. She learns the hard way that it is not a fairytail.
For Kyra the American dream might seem greedy – at least compared to the Rincуns – but it is hardly unusual that Americans of that status have those sorts of dreams. Kyra seems to be obsessed by one of the houses that she is suppose to sell. And her constant craving for that house keeps her from appreciate what she have; a nice house in a nice in an exclusive community and a good husband and a son.
In conclusion, the American dream will remain a dream for most people. And if you are unlucky, like the Rincуns, it is even less likely to fall true. Cбndido’s selfish decision to go to America again, with his wife, destroyed both of their lives. The best thing would have been either to go there alone and trying to make money first, or go home when he noticed that he was still a victim of bad luck. But the dream was too strong. On part of the rich natives, like Kyra, the dream may destroy lives in a different way. The result is the same, unhappiness, just in a totally different way. Having dreams is not anything negative, on the contrary, but to live [next page]