Earth Did Not Devour

And The Earth did not devour him This story had a lot of meaning to me. This was about a man who dealt with the many struggles of being a Southern Migrant worker in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It was considered a landmark of Chicano Literature. This story speaks of a man who is reflecting back on a years’ time. The author not only wrote the novel, but he lived it as well. Tomas Rivera was also a migrant farm worker when he was growing up, but as he grew older he followed through with education and was rewarded with a higher lifestyle. He tries to project the reality of these workers lives and the many hardships that follow to his readers as he takes them through his memories of experiences, whether great or terrifying. The theme of family was strongly shown throughout this story. It was based on the young boy’s family, and himself, but the book originally was meant to show readers of the struggles of the community as a whole. Another theme that was addressed was education. Education was shown to be of great importance in this novel. Reason being, education is needed to succeed and progress. The father constantly nagged his son about obtaining a higher education so he could get a more rewarding job as a result. Having an education would get these minority migrant workers off of the fields and into a high paying career. A third theme may have dealt with religion. He often questioned his beliefs of God when his family was getting sick of exhaustion from working on the farm. He kept asking his mother why she kept relying on religion and candles to relieve his family from illness. He also questioned God’s intentions whenever the innocent were always the ones becoming sick, the ones who never did harm to anyone.
What I found to be ironic was in the short story, “The little burnt victims”. To summarize this short story, I am going to focus on the Boxing Gloves. Due to the fact that the owners of the fields did not allow children to be nearby while their parents were