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 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “First Communion”
A boy tells the story of his first communion held in mid-spring. His mother placed a picture of hell at the head of his bed and papered the walls with pictures of the devil. A nun tells the children they must confess to the priest all of their sins without exception. She emphasizes “sins of the flesh” (107). If they do not confess, they will be guilty of sacrilege and go to hell. The nun has the children practice confessing. The narrator is especially afraid of hell because he “had fallen against a small basin filled with hot coals” a few months earlier and burned his calf (108). He could imagine burning in hell. The night before his first communion, he stays up late, fretfully taking inventory of his sins. He counts 150 but decides to confess to 200, just to be on the safe side.
He wakes up early the next morning and goes to the church. It is still closed when he arrives. Assuming the priest overslept, the boy walks around the church, passing a dry cleaner’s next door. He hears laughter and moaning and sees a man and woman lying naked on the floor. They see him and yell at him to leave. He realizes this must be what the nun meant by “sins of the flesh” (109). He feels as if he is the one who sinned and considers not taking communion, but he does not want to have to explain himself. At confession, he confesses to 200 sins “of all kinds” but does not mention what he witnessed (110). When he returns home, “everything seems changed” (110). He imagines his parents, the priests, and the nuns on the floor naked and laughing. He wants to know “more about everything” but wonders if “maybe everything was the same” (110).
Vignette 8 Summary
When a teacher says she needs a button, a young boy tears one off what the teacher guesses is his only shirt. She wonders what motivated the boy—a desire to be helpful, a feeling of belonging, or love for the teacher. She is surprised by “the intensity of the child’s desire” (111).
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Little Burnt Victims”
On a Sunday night, the Garcia family—Don Efraín, Doña Chona, and their three children, Raulito (7), Juan (6), and María (5)—see a boxing movie. When they return home, Don Efraín brings out a pair of boxing gloves, dresses the children in shorts, and rubs alcohol on their “little chests” as they had seen in the movie (112). Doña Chona does not like them to box because it leads to arguments, but Don Efraín says maybe they will learn to defend themselves or one of them will become a high-paid boxer in the future. He plans to buy the children a punching bag after he gets paid.
Don Efraín expresses his deep love for his children and laments that they cannot bring the children to the field with them. The boss does not want children distracting their parents. Previously, the Garcias brought their children and left them in their car. They got sick from the heat, so the Garcias now leave the children at home, returning to check on them at lunch. The Monday after the boxing movie, the Garcias are working in the field when they see a plume of smoke rising from the farm. The workers abandon the fields and rush back to the farm. The Garcias’ shack is in flames. Only Raulito survives. He had put the boxing gloves on Maria and Juan and rubbed alcohol on their chests. When Raulito had gone to the stove to fry eggs, “the kerosene tank on the stove exploded” (114). The two youngest children caught fire, but the gloves did not burn.
Vignette 9 Summary
A groom and his father fix up the bride’s yard and raise a canvas tent. The couple marries in a church then leads a procession down the street. Children run ahead calling, “Here come the newlyweds” (115).
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Night the Lights Went Out”
On a night free of storms and lightening, the lights go out across town. Townspeople discuss the blackout’s cause. A boy called Ramón was in love with Juanita. He wanted to marry her, but she told him her father wanted her to finish school. Juanita told Ramón she loved him. The townspeople say she was lying to Ramón and “going around” with another man, Ramiro, when she was up north (116). Ramón found out from his friends and confronted Juanita when she returned. At first, he was so happy to see her that he did not want to break up. After talking with her, though, he changed his mind, and they split up.
Ramón got drunk and lamented the pain he felt from Juanita’s betrayal. He told her not to dance with anyone else at the next dance and that she would pay for betraying him. She told him she would do whatever she wanted. At the dance, Ramón saw her dancing with a man. She refused to dance with Ramón, and they argued. She slapped him. He told her he was going to kill himself and rushed out. Shortly after, the lights went out across town.
Electric company workers later find his body “burnt to a crisp,” holding a transformer (119). The townspeople note how much the two loved each other.
Vignette 10 Summary
One evening, just when a group of migrant workers is expected home, townspeople hear fire trucks. Shortly after, surviving workers deliver the news: A truck transporting spinach pickers collided with another car, bursting “into flames” upon impact (120). The workers were either thrown from the truck or trapped within as it burned. The “Anglo” woman who was driving the car had been drinking at a bar, upset after being left by her husband (120). She was from a “dry county” (120). The accident leaves 16 sixteen workers dead.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
The lives, losses, traditions, and beliefs of the migrant community are further explored in Cchapters eight 8 through ten10. In Cchapter eight8, anxiety about sin and hell hang over the boy’s first communion. The heedless pleasure of the couple in the dry cleaners contrasts against the boy’s attempt to meticulously catalogue his sins. Seeing the couple leaves the boy feeling both fearful and entranced. Having been instilled with a fear of hell, he worries about taking communion after what he has witnessed but later feels changed by what he saw. Seeing the couple helps him make sense of the nun’s phrase “sins of the flesh” and invites him to reflect that there may be more to the world than what he has experienced (107). In the vignette that follows, the reason for a young boy’s loving gesture remains shrouded, highlighting the complexity of human motivation.
Chapter nine 9 tells the story of two young children’s tragic deaths. The circumstances that led to their deaths both heighten the tragic sense and illuminate the challenges migrant workers face taking care of their families. The children were mimicking a boxing match as taught to them by a movie the family watched together and by their father, Don Efraín. Both contributed to the tragic outcome as the children were covered in flammable alcohol when the stove exploded. Don Efraín and Doña Chona did not want to leave their children alone but had no choice, as their boss does not allow them to bring their children with them to the fields. Providing a counterpoint to the tragic ending, Vvignette 9nine shares an optimistic beginning: a couple’s wedding day.
Love and betrayal are the subjects of Cchapter ten10, as a young couple’s breakup leads to suicide. Juanita insists she loves Ramón but avoids committing to him, telling him her father wants her to finish school. She also enjoys the company of other men and rejects Ramón‘s possessiveness. Her desire for more experiences—of school and of other men—clashes with Ramón‘s desire to pin her down. Her refusal to submit to Ramón leads him to suicide. At the end of the chapter, one speaker asks another, “They just loved each other so much, don’t you think?” (119). The other replies, “No doubt” (119). Though no conclusions are explicitly drawn, the final dialogue suggests that tragedy and irreconcilability does not negate that love exists. Tragedy is also the topic of Vvignette 10ten, when 16 sixteen workers lose their lives in a drunk driving accident. The perpetrator is a woman who was drinking from despair at being left by her husband. While Ramón becomes the victim of his despair, the woman unintentionally victimizes others.
