• Mood, Theme, Irony- “I lie back and listen, as on another night I might listen to Mozart or Mendelsson, lulled by the impassioned beauty of it. The waterfall trickles. The coyotes sing. I have a handful of raisins and a blanket: what more could I want? All the world knows I am content (Boyle79).”
• Irony- “If she’d stayed in Tepoztlan all the gray days of her life she would have had enough to eat, as long as her father was alive and she jumped like a slave every time he snapped his fingers ( Boyle139).”
• Symbol- “Who can say what revolutionary purpose the coyote has in mind… Sadly, the backlash is brewing…he is only trying to survive, to make a living, to take advantage of the opportunities given to him… The coyotes keep coming, breeding up to fill in the gaps, moving in where the living is easy. They are cunning, versatile, hungry and unstoppable (Boyle211-215).
Irony is shown in America Rincon’s canyon camp because it shows that by hopping the border, she lost what she hoped to gain, and gained (homelessness, starvation) what she hoped to lose. Boyle’s purposefully used irony to show that the deeper meaning of the millions of illegal immigrants that are living in the United States right now is that they all have risked and some have lost everything for the American dream. For them, crossing the border was no midnight dare, but a legitimate chance to live in a land of liberty and justice. In contrast, the irony in Delaney’s trail campout is that although he has everything in the world he could dream of, becoming one with nature is his one true source of happiness. Therefore, the more complex meaning in their existences is that what Candido wants, Delaney has and what Candido has, Delaney wants.
In addition, Delaney’s contentment during his night in the woods illustrates the serene mood of the scene and Boyle’s overlying theme that by living simplistically and being content, happiness is easily attained.
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It is interesting to see the different take you had on the message T.C. Boyle was trying to convey. I appreciate how you tied the rhetorical strategies to the complex meaning of the novel- that we should all strive for contentment. However, striving for contentment is itself a paradox. It seems that all of the characters are striving for that place, that Promised Land, where they will no longer want for anything. Even when someone, like Delaney, who dwells in the affluent Arroyo Blanco, the Eden if you will, has the chance to truly be content, he bites the apple. He is so preoccupied with looking around the corner that he cannot see the blessings before him. The same is true for the Rincons. They strove to improve their circumstances and ended up destitute.James Openheim very rightly stated that "the foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet."
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