33 pages • 1 hour read
Luis RodriguezAlways Running
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Luis immerses himself in the Animal Tribe, acquiring the nickname “Chin” due to his deformed jaw. The Animal Tribe, often shortened to AT, engages in warfare with a neighboring rival gang, the Sangra Diablos. In a shootout, one of Luis’ closest friends, Clavo, is shot and loses an eye. This assault sparks a war between the AT and the Sangras, and Clavo quits gang life. On a trip to the beach, Luis and his friends argue with a group of white surfer-looking boys, who turn out to be cops. The cops find drugs on Luis and his friends and arrest them before releasing the group to their parents. Luis explains that, in his mind, the police were just another gang, one directly contributing to the street violence he experiences.
A new friend named Yuk Yuk replaces Chavo in Luis’ los cuatro—his group of four close friends. The gang’s identity begins to shift. They increasingly identify themselves as Lomas—those from the hills—as opposed to the AT. Yuk Yuk introduces Luis to larger scale shoplifting, teaching him to lift “bikes, TVs, stereos, cameras, guns …” (75). These robberies sometimes involve weapons, which makes Luis uncomfortable, but Yuk Yuk insists. One day, the group decides to rob a drive-in movie theatre. Luis is tasked with holding the gun. It goes badly, with the owner shooting at Luis. The owner’s bullet narrowly misses Luis, who hops a fence with his friends and takes off running “like a desert rabbit” (78).
Chapter 4 Summary
Luis enters high school in crisis. He has attempted suicide and, for a time, was exiled to the family’s garage by his mother. There are times when he lives “in the fields,” his mother fed up with “pulling [Luis] out of jail cells … expecting a call from a hospital or a morgue” (81). They reach a compromise: Luis will live in the garage, without heat or a bathroom.
Luis’ high school is diverse, both racially and socioeconomically. The “Anglo and Asian upper-class students” were “tracked into ‘A’ classes … the pep squads and cheerleaders” (83). The Mexican students from Las Lomas are assumed to be academically unmotivated and are shunted into shop class and technical courses. Luis picks up the saxophone and practices the instrument religiously. “The saxophone meant everything to me,” he says (85). His brother Joe accuses Luis of stealing his records, and a fight ensues. Joe crushes Luis’ saxophone beneath his foot, irreparably damaging it. Luis has no money to repair it—all he can think about are “the lost melodies” (87).
During “Fiesta Days,” a local celebration celebrating L.A.’s Mexican heritage, Luis and his friends sneak into a neighborhood that is Sangras territory in order to attend the festival. There, Luis meets Viviana, a girl with “lashes like paint brushes” (88). He wins her a stuffed animal at the fair. Luis learns her brothers are Sangras members. As Luis and Viviana kiss on a roof, a fight starts below between Lomas and Sangras members. Luis stays with her rather than joining the fray.
Luis’ high school hosts a traditional (but not school sanctioned) fight between the white and Mexican students. Luis and his friends rob some white students of their money before being confronted by the local police. Carlitos, one of Luis’ fellow gang members, is placed in a chokehold by a cop and passes out on the street. The police refuse to let paramedics treat him, and the watching crowd of Mexican teenagers erupts in anger, throwing bottles. A full race riot erupts, with groups of white and Mexican people attacking one another. Luis is cornered by a group of white men, but escapes. For his part in the riot, Luis is expelled from school, which does not bother him. He gets work as a bus boy at a Mexican restaurant, where white patrons condescend to him. He takes revenge by spilling drinks on them and spitting in their food.
Luis begins sniffing paint as a way to transport himself from his unfortunate situation. He begins dating a friend’s sister, named Payasa, meaning “clown.” Payasa is a fellow drug user and eventually becomes too much “like the walking dead” for Luis to handle (105). She attempts suicide, but survives. Luis begins self-mutilating.
Chapter 3-4 Analysis
In these chapters, Luis begins his downward spiral into gang life, violence against innocent people, and drug use. Where his actions in his childhood clica were child’s play, his involvement in the Animal Tribe makes Luis a perpetrator of real violence against others, and subjects him to violence from others, as well. A close friend is shot in the eye. Luis is beaten by the police. He commits his first robbery. Luis deals with this trauma by using drugs, which transport him from his dangerous, often sad world to another, where there is no pain. This new, serious rash of violence in Luis’ life is accompanied by a shift in gang identity. His little, low-impact gang is absorbed by a larger, deadly gang known as Las Lomas. Luis has reached a point of no return. Clavo, his friend who was shot in the eye, makes the decision to leave, something Luis tries hard to prevent. It will take Luis years and countless traumatic experiences to extricate himself from gang life.
Luis becomes accustomed to violence as he enters high school and so inflicts that violence on those he deems enemies without any sense of remorse. He and his friends attack white and Asian classmates simply because of their race. To Luis, this makes sense. Anyone who is not exactly like him—a Sangra member, a white classmate—is his enemy, and therefore deserving of pain and cruelty. This section of the memoir is marked by Luis’ inability to acknowledge that he is doing anything wrong. He rationalizes all of his actions. He dismisses the police as “just another gang” (72) and so absolves himself of his gang affiliation. If he can pigeonhole the police, who are held in such high esteem by American society, as no different from himself, he can justify the atrocities his own gang commits. As he attacks an Asian student, he recalls with sarcastic quotes that the Asian boy protests that what Luis is doing isn’t “right” (97). It is notable that, even as an adult memoirist, Luis never admits that what he does to others is wrong. He describes the assaults of innocent teenagers, the rapes of drugged, helpless girls, and the shootings of unarmed men with impassivity, except when he describes his feelings of horror. But his actions are never his fault—it is always others who are at fault. In these chapters, Luis crosses nearly every line of decency. His only way to continue on is to divorce himself from any feeling of responsibility.
