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.
Chapters 2-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Children Couldn’t Wait”
It is an unusually hot April. Children work in the fields alongside adults. The workers become thirsty waiting for “the boss” to bring them water (77). Despite the heat, he only comes twice a day, so the workers refresh themselves by drinking from the cattle’s water tank. The boss threatens not to compensate the workers, who are paid by the hour, if he catches them stopping work to drink. Parents encourage their children to wait and work, so the children pretend to go to the bathroom next to the tank to sneak drinks of water. The boss realizes this but wants to catch the children in the act so he can have an excuse not to pay them after they have already done their work.
The boss decides to scare the children by firing his shotgun. He accidentally hits a child in the head, and killings him. Workers later discuss how the boss got off but lost his money and his sanity, eventually attempting but failing to kill himself.
Vignette 2 Summary
An unnamed woman channels “the spirit” and entertains questions from community members. A mother who has received a letter from the government that her son, Julianito, is “missing in action,” asks to know what has happened to him (77). The woman tells the mother that her son is fine and will return home soon.
Chapter 3 Summary: “A Prayer”
A mother prays for her son, who is serving in Korea and from whom she has not heard. She asks God to protect him “that no bullet may pierce his heart like it happened to Doña Virginia’s son” (80). She says her son was afraid to go to war and was a good, gentle baby. She prays also to the Virgin Mary to protect him from “the eyes of the Communists and the Koreans and the Chinese so that they cannot see him, so they won’t kill him” (80). The mother has saved all of her son’s things for when he returns. She recalls the bond she felt with him while nursing him as a baby and asks God and the Virgin Mary to take her life and heart and save her son’s.
Vignette 3 Summary
Two men discuss Utah. One asks the other if he has been contracted to work there. The other says he does not trust that “Utah” exists and asks the first speaker if he knows where it is. The first speaker says he thinks it might be “somewhere close to Japan” (82).
Chapter 4 Summary: “It’s That It Hurts”
An unnamed boy narrates his thoughts and fears after being expelled from school for hitting a white boy. The white boy said he does not like Mexicans “because they steal” and hit the narrator in a school restroom (85). The boy is afraid to tell his parents, and worryinges they will whip him. He knows “everyone at home” wants him to go to school (86). His father wants him to be a telephone operator, and the narrator is hurt that he will not be able to achieve this. He considers pretending to go to school but realizes he will not be able to keep up the ruse. He also considers hiding in the cemetery he walks through on his way home.
A janitor stands guard over the narrator in the restroom and calls school administrators. The boy listens as the janitor says, “T[t]he Mexican kid” hit “a couple of our boys” and makes it clear the farm bosses do not care if the boy is expelled because “t[t]hey need him in the fields” (85).
The boy feels embarrassed in the school up north. The nurse made him strip for an exam and checked his head for lice. A “gringo” made a rude gesture and stared at the boy when he was put in the corner. The boy also felt embarrassed when he was unable to read what the teacher asked him to read. He recalls his first fight with older kids who picked on him until he fought back. He says he began “feeling bigger ever since” (85).
Vignette 4 Summary
One child asks another why they he “goes to school so much” (88). The other says it is to be ready for opportunities. The first child says the “poor can’t get poorer” (88). It is the higher ups who have the most to lose.
Chapters 2-4 Analysis
Chapters two2 2through four 4 4introduce the two main themes threaded through the book’s stories and vignettes: the tension between paradoxical elements and the power of storytelling. The second chapter and third vignette highlight the workers’ vulnerability to exploitation. In the second chapter, a child is accidentally killed attempting to drink water while working in the fields on a hot day. The boss withheld water hoping for an excuse to cheat the workers from of their wages after they had completed their work. Though he loses his money and his mind, the boss is not found guilty for his murder of the child, implying a justice system rigged against the workers. This detail introduces a recurring motif: the way racism/ethnocentrism marginalizes the Mexican workers. The third vignette highlights how the migrant workers depend on contractors’ honesty: The workers set out for unknown places, hoping and expecting that they will be taken where they can find work.
Vignette two 2 2and Cchapter three 3 explore religious faith and further develop the motif of skepticism as a woman—or possibly two separate women—prays for her soldier son’s safety. In the second vignette, a woman asks a spirit channeler for news of her son after being told that he is missing in action in Korea. The channeler tells the woman her son is fine, but in the third chapter, a woman refers to the death of Doña Virginia’s son in Korea. Later in the book, Don Mateo’s son also dies in Korea. It is not specified whether the woman in the second vignette is Doña Virginia or Don Mateo’s wife. This lack of clarity suggests a universal nature to the mother figure: Mothers pray for their sons’ safety in war, and those prayers remain unanswered.
Chapter four 4 returns to the unnamed boy, who has been expelled from school for getting into a fight with a white boy. The white boy started the fight because of the racist/ethnocentric stereotypes he holds against Mexicans, yet it is the narrator who is expelled. The boy is most upset and fearful of how his family will react. They want him to stay in school so that he can achieve greater status and financial security, a point emphasized in the vignette that concludes the chapter. The boy is both embarrassed and hurt that the school has expelled him. Though he never says so explicitly, it’s clear that the school discriminates against him and other migrant children, marginalizing and punishing them for what they do not know and subjecting them to humiliating scrutiny.
