Sophia Scherr Ccqc #2

Both of the couples get twisted into more chaos and dilemmas just when they are getting out of their last situation. The Rincóns’ misfortunes are presented in ironic parallel misfortunes such as Delaney’s car getting stolen and Kyra’s other dog is getting taken by a coyote after she puts up a fence to keep them out. América and Cándido can never catch a break when it comes to money because they keep getting robbed or hungry. “What gave them the right to all the riches of the world?” (200). They start to show their feelings toward the rich and lash out when they are left with no hope for a job when Kyra calls a friend to get rid of the illegal immigrants who hang around the roads that her and her clients drive on. “La Migra nailed him, and now he stood in line with all the hopeless others.” (172). This state of confusion and desperation that Kyra goes to to make the streets clean so she could assure more clients that they are living in a safe and protected community. Kyra has this sense of selfishness and disregards these people who are poor because she is so overwhelmed with the American Lifestyle. “I agree that everybody’s got a right to work and have a decent standard of living, but there’s just so many of them, they've overwhelmed us, the schools, welfare, the prisons and now the streets…” (185). Delaney feels absolutely powerless when his car is stolen and is upset that he gets a brand new one hours after the theft. América and Cándido are robbed also, but by all the money that they own. The Tortilla Curtain is all about the characters having no hope and how similar and different their problems relate to each other.  

T.C Boyle juxtaposes the two main characters and their hardships they go through. The wall represents the segregation of Arroyo Blanco and the bad aspects of Los Angeles. While trying to support his wife and have a home, Cándido struggles to stay alive. On the other hand, Delaney and his family are living in a nice home and struggle with keeping people like Cándido out of their community. “He was being walled in, buried alive, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.” (244). Their lives intersect and when ones lives are the worst in their world, when in another, they feel bat their lowest point. “They lived in their glass palaces, with their gates and fences and security systems” (200). In the Arroyo Blanco Estates community the gate that protects from burglaries and coyotes. This keeps things out and keep things in like free roaming ideas like his neighbors racial opinions.“This is a community… an exclusive private highly desirable location. And what do you think’s going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children” (221). There is another juxtaposing side between Delaney and Cándido as they both try to support their families and how  they pursue their individual model of the American Dream. Another example for this racial indifference is when Kyra goes to the house and finds the disrespectful words that the man in the baseball cap wrote. “Black paint, slick with the falling light, ten looping letters in Spanish: PINCHE PUTA” (223). Kyra gets her first taste of this dangerous life that América and Cándido live with everyday. The vicious and angry pitfire that grows with people who have so little grows throughout the book with América and Cándido’s dilemma with money. The possessions of the Mossenbachers’ is what they have and what they have grown to have their entire lives. Ones who live with at least something and grow apart from this lifestyle of the priority of possession.