Jesse

These chapters highlight Jesse’s loneliness. He has a friend in his brother Abel, who looks out for him and loves him—but he worries about losing him to their landlord’s daughter Glenda, whom he sees as an unfit partner. Glenda is not Mexican and already has a child, though she’s unmarried. These are Jesse’s reasons for disliking Glenda, but ultimately she could have been any woman, as he views Abel starting a new life as a threat to his own. Without his brother, Jesse has no one to rely on. He can visit his mother and stepfather but refuses to ever live with them again. He is a shy young man who believes he isn’t good with girls and dates classmate Minerva with caution. Jesse has a lot of love to share, but life experiences have made him introverted and wary of others.

The family dynamics in the novel are complicated. Jesse’s mother doesn’t want to be without her sons, but her second husband makes it impossible for her to have the relationship she wants with them. She married her second husband for the sake of her sons, but any familial or financial stability she had hoped for was—and continues to be—deterred by his aggression and alcoholism. Jesse and Abel feel like strangers in their mother’s home. The former often contemplates how long his stepfather will live, implying that he hopes for his death and a return to his biological family.

Abel has a more fractured relationship with his mother and stepfather, though Gary Soto doesn’t reveal the details of this schism. This is notable because Jesse wants Abel to himself without seeming to realize that the latter must feel as lonely, if not lonelier, than him. The family feels responsible for each other, but they don’t have enough trust as a unit. Jesse dreams of creating a life for his mother in which she won’t have to rely on his stepfather for financial security. His motives are therefore not wholly focused on his individual happiness.

Along with his dream to save his mother from his stepfather, Jesse dreams of traveling. He wants to see the Amazon, England, Ireland, and Paris. In Fresno, many people seem stuck because they prefer to deal with familiar challenges over surprises. Poverty also has a way of keeping people stuck. But 17-year-old Jesse has a rich imagination and holds on to the dream that one day, his life will be easier. For someone so young, he has many stressors. The external conflicts in his life influence his internal conflicts, but his dreams remain comforting and motivating. Jesse’s dreams as well as his faith in God and himself ensure that he doesn’t succumb to pessimism in the face of all his problems.

Another external threat in Jesse’s life is the looming Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is an ongoing conflict, one that threatens to send Jesse abroad to die or be traumatized. Though Jesse is surrounded by people who don’t support the war, his choice may not matter in the draft. Because he is not yet 18 years old, he retains the hope that he will not have to go.

Jesse is comforted by his dreams and faith in God, often reflecting on his evolving understanding of God. As a child, he saw God as a magical entity, but now he understands God as a spirit to pray to and rely on. Jesse’s faith is strong, but he seeks to understand more about it. He is particularly enraptured and confused by the Holy Trinity and the particularities of sin. Jesse has many questions about morality that he hopes religion will answer for him, but the distance between him and understanding feels wide for him. In Catholicism, the Bible is interpreted and taught by priests, but Jesse doesn’t feel a connection with his priest, nor does his priest’s sermons help him better understand God. Jesse has two religions: the Catholic Church and his own individual faith. Soto explores how religion is both a community mindset and an individual dream through Jesse’s experiences and existential questions.

In these chapters, Soto describes how an “us versus them” mentality forms. Jesse’s schoolmate Raul is assaulted by the police at a Chicano rally, highlighting the physical and emotional dangers Chicanos face in fighting for their civil rights. Just as Abel had said, violence will come for those who take the Chicano Movement seriously. Raul uses terms like gavachos, a Mexican term for white people, though it originated as a term for French people specifically. Racial othering and violence are a part of the creation of an “us versus them” mentality. Because activists like Raul have seen how far white society will go to suppress minority voices like his own, he is unafraid of physical violence.