88 pages • 2 hours read
Tomás RiveraAnd The Earth Did Not Devour Him
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Under the House”
A boy is lying under a house because he does not want to go to school. The teacher “would spank him for sure because he didn’t know the words” (139). He is afraid of spiders, and fleas bite him, but he likes hiding in the dark where he can think. He thinks about the stories his father used to tell him at night about how he could get witches to fall from the sky by praying. The boy reflects on events that transpired over the last year: His father insisted that he would get his haircut. Don Mateo scared the portrait artist from returning. The fireman who carried out the bodies of the burned children cried. The narrator’s mother, Doña María, cried each time she recalled her solo trip downtown.
Children throw rocks at the boy until he comes out of his hiding place. He hears the woman of the house under which he has been hiding say, “That poor family” and lament that the boy is losing his mind as his mother has (144). As he walks away, though, he feels happy. He does not feel he has lost anything but has discovered, recovered, and pieced things together. He returns home and climbs a tree in his yard. He sees a palm tree on the horizon and imagines someone is in it. He waves his arm back and forth in salute.
Chapter 14 Analysis
Though never explicitly stated, the final chapter suggests how the stories connect and who the boy of previous chapters is: the son of Doña María and her husband, Mexican migrant workers living in Texas. While he is lying under the house, the boy reflects on events told throughout the book, whether it is to share what happened next (for example, the fireman weeping as he carried out the children’s bodies after the fire) or to imply that he was the central character through whose eyes the stories are told. At the end of the chapter, the boy feels happy that he has had time to reflect and make sense of his experiences. As he sits in the tree in his yard, he imagines seeing and being seen by a person on the horizon, suggesting a feeling of empowerment and agency achieved by telling the stories of his people.
