32 pages • 1 hour read
Luis Alberto UrreaThe House of Broken Angels
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Duality of the Mexican-American Identity
Mexican-American identity, and the grey area between Mexico and America, is a prominent theme in the novel. Urrea picks up the nuances of Mexican-American life through each character’s unique perspective on their heritage. Little Angel, who is half-white, is particularly caught up in this duality and the impossibility of living between cultures.
The role of shame in depictions of identity is prominent in Urrea’s work. White people shame Big Angel for being Mexican, while Little Angel’s family shames him for not being Mexican enough. Big Angel reflects on his first six months with a green card, thinking: “And they were making him embarrassed about being Mexican.” (209). Big Angel clings to his Mexican roots, despite decades of life as a legal immigrant in the United States. He is set apart from naturalized Americans by his appearance, his accent, and his memory. Meanwhile, Little Angel lives a dual life: His father and extended family are Mexican, and his mother was white. Though Little Angel can more easily cross cultural borders, living as an academic in Seattle, he is also alienated from his Mexican heritage. On top of that, his family resents him for his ability to fit in among white folks. This choice between whiteness and Mexicanness inspires envy in many family members, but Little Angel feels trapped by the insistence that he pick a side.
Urrea expresses the duality of Mexican-American life by blending Spanish and English speech throughout the novel. Characters move between Spanish and English and frequently express their views on how speaking Spanish shapes their identity. Younger characters speak more English, while older characters speak Spanish or accented English. The duality of language is representative of the duality of identities that these characters experience.
Immortality and Death
Because of Big Angel’s looming death and Mamá América’s funeral, mortality and immortality are frequently on the minds of the novel’s protagonists. Big Angel struggles with his own certainty that he will die coupled with his desire for immortality. He describes the experience of his slow death as follows:
When you died, you died in small doses. You had trouble speaking. You forgot who was beside you. You were suddenly furious and in a panic of outrage. You wished you could be saintly. You wished you weren’t so weak. You suddenly felt better and fooled yourself into believing that a miracle was about to happen (196).
Big Angel desires a miracle but at the same time knows that his life is coming to an end. In lieu of real immortality, he struggles to find ways to live on in the memories of his loved ones. Some of the physical manifestations of Big Angel’s desire for immortality are his gratitude book and his scale model of San Diego. Big Angel keeps these objects hidden from his family to preserve the surprise of discovering him in a new way after he is gone. The book and the model are representations of Big Angel’s spirit in the real world: They allow him to live on after death.
Urrea plays with the ironic mundanity of death when he nearly ends the novel with the birthday party. Death is often mundane, but Big Angel’s mundane death is interrupted in the final moments of the novel when a gunman comes for Lalo. This plays out like a scene from a soap opera, but its message is more realistic: In this scene, Urrea reminds us that death is certain to come but impossible to predict. The possibility of death exists in every moment.
Challenging Gender Roles
Though racial identity takes a forefront in this novel, sexual and gender identity is also an important theme for many characters, including Big Angel. These ideas are reflected in discussions of fatherhood, queerness, and the role of women. Nearly all characters in this novel struggle with their fathers. The violence, absence, or indifference of fathers creates a gap in knowledge for Big Angel and César, who struggle to understand what it means to be a father. Big Angel reflects on his experience of early fatherhood and the violence he perpetrated on his children: “Perhaps his biggest mistake was his believing that rage could help him be the perfect father” (36). Big Angel changes his tactics as he ages and realizes the folly of his old ways. Similarly, César reflects on his own father’s parenting, or lack thereof. Though César struggles to understand his son, he is gentle with him. He accepts his son’s eccentricities rather than shaming him. He takes a new approach to fatherhood that repairs old wounds.
El Yndio introduces the queer themes in this novel. He is exiled from the family because of his gender identity—although he admits that in many ways he exiled himself. El Yndio is the prodigal son, as evidenced by his tattoo, but he returns to a family that is significantly more open-minded and affectionate than the one he left. He thinks, seeing his family curled up together in his father’s bed, “This wasn’t the family he remembered” (232). Big Angel’s acceptance of El Yndio challenges his former ideas of traditional masculinity and sexuality.
Finally, Urrea challenges gender roles in this text through the novel’s women, who are strong and confident in the face of persecution. When Little Angel nominates Minnie as the family’s new patriarch, he insists on a reimagining of gender norms in the family. The new family is one that accepts El Yndio and places Minnie is a position of authority. This is the way forward.
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By Luis Alberto Urrea
