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Pao Coronel
Professor Filbeck
English 091
9 December 2014
Understanding the Immigrant Life
T.C. Boyles The Tortilla Curtain narrates the stories of two families in the 1990s and the
tragedies that they face as they pursue for the American Dream. One of the families in the
story is a couple that illegally makes their way to the United States in hope for a better life. With
the illegal status the couple has, Cndido and Amrica tries to survive in the dog-eat-dog world
and through this, Boyle shows what immigrants go through and how hard it is to be different
from the people around you. In T.C. Boyles literary work, The Tortilla Curtain, Boyle conveys
the hardships immigrants go through as they cope for a better life in a different country and these
hardships include racism, language barrier, and the struggle to find a source of income.
The most noticeable message The Tortilla Curtain conveys is the racism towards
immigrants. In Boyles novel, theres a part where Delaney, another protagonist of the story, hits
Cndido with his car and after the incident, Delaney thinks to himself, It was people like this
Mexican or whatever he was who were responsible, thoughtless people, stupid people, people
who wanted to turn the whole world into a garbage dump, a little Tijuana (11). Delaney
automatically assumes that Cndido is a Mexican and that Mexicans, in general, are here to trash
the world. Even though Delaney was the one who dealt the damage, Cndido is the one thats
judged because of his race. In another part of the book where Delaney bumps into Jack Jardine at
a grocery store, Jack tells Delaney [Mexicans]re peasants, my friend. No education, no
resources, no skillsall theyve got to offer is a strong back (101). Jack refers to all the

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Mexicans as a low life ethnicity with having no purpose in this world. Mexicans in this book are
looked upon as useless beings, even though the people criticizing have never been in their place.
Another hindrance that the book presents with being an immigrant is the language barrier
the one must go through. When the white man Amrica was working for says it was time for
them to go she couldnt escape the feeling that he was criticizing her, urging her to work faster,
harder (94). Due to the language difference, Amrica didnt know if the man she was working
for was either scolding her to work harder or telling her it was time to go because she didnt
speak English and the white man didnt speak Spanish. The only thing she could get a hint from
what he was saying was through his tone of voice and body language, which didnt really help
much because he had an aggressive tone of voice. Later on in the story, Amrica tries to ask for
gloves from the white man she was working for and says escuse, pleese, as she holds up her
hands, followed by saying guantes, pleese, para las manos. In response, [the white man]
looked bewildered, as if hed never seen her before (134). The language disparity made it more
challenging for Amrica to ask for gloves because her boss didnt understand a word she said
and she didnt know how to say gloves in English. If Amrica knew how to say gloves in
English, her hands wouldnt have been damaged from all the corrosive she used.
Based from the books storyline, looking for a job is probably the main obstacle an
immigrant has to go through when migrating. After Cndido got hit by Delaney, Amrica had to
start looking for a job to provide food and thats when she met Candelario Prez, the headman of
the camp, who told her theres not much work for women here, daughter (56). According to
this statement, being an immigrant woman means less opportunities of finding a job. Based from
what Candelario said, women cannot do a mans job because he singled out women about not
having as much work available compared to men. Candelarios trying to say that women

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immigrants have a much lower chance of getting a job compared to men. Just when Cndido
thought things were about to get better for them after three weeks of on-again, off-again work
and the promise of something better, Al Lopez had to let him go (180). Even though Cndido
worked hard and was determined, it was not enough for Al to keep him because of his lack of
legal documents which was a risk for Al. In this dog-eat-dog world, it didnt matter if you
worked hard, if you didnt have any legal documents, you could be let go anytime and you cant
do anything about it because you have nowhere to run to. These are some of the difficulties that
an immigrant has to go through according to Boyles literary work.
Boyle wants to send a message in writing The Tortilla Curtain. He wants us, the people
of America, to stop with the racism towards immigrants. He wants to show us what immigrants
go through, what they have to deal with, and that racism doesnt really make their lives any
easier. He also wants us to realize that some people in other races may be illegal or commit
crimes, but that doesnt mean that we look at the whole race as violent people. Like every other
person in this planet, immigrants want a better life and in order for them to do that, some of them
take their chances and cross the border to the United States without legal documents. Illegal or
not, immigrants are not here to cause harm. Immigrants have as much equal rights as every
American does; and thats the message Boyle wants his readers to know.
The Tortilla Curtains message says that even though immigration is something a person
would do in order to try and have a better life, migrating to a different country would have many
obstacles along the way in pursuing this dream. With pursuing the dream of a comfortable life in
a different country, the obstacles immigrants have to go through, according to Boyles novel,
includes racism, the disparity between the language spoken, and the pain of looking for a job. In
The Tortilla Curtain, our protagonists Amrica and Cndido, goes through these conflicts in

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trying to achieve the American Dream that they have been longing for. Through the story of
our protagonists, Boyle wants to show us, the readers, that immigrants are not here because
theyre violent and they want to steal what we have; instead theyre here, like every other human
being, struggling and trying to hope for a better life.

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Work Cited
Boyle, T. Coraghessan. The Tortilla Curtain. New York: Viking, 1995. Print.