Under The Feet Of Jesus

As Alejo explains to Estrella in Chapter 2, the oil humans eventually use as gasoline originates from the bones of prehistoric dead plants and animals. The tar pits containing oil are therefore a symbol of the exploitation of others’ suffering, including the suffering of the piscadores who harvest America’s food. In fact, Alejo even says that the sound of someone screaming while picking peaches made him think about animals stuck dying in the tar pits. In addition to its metaphorical significance, oil also limits and victimizes the novel’s characters in more literal ways, since the migrant economy they are part of relies on gasoline and their own ability to afford it. For that reason, when Alejo says that without oil there would be no gas, Estrella’s initial response is, “Good. We’d stay put then” (86). At the same time, Alejo nearly dies because the family can’t afford the gasoline to transport him to a hospital. In a very practical sense, then, oil is also symbolic of the exploitative system that both supports and traps migrant workers.

More than perhaps anything else in the book, Petra’s varicose veins are a symbol of the physical demands of migrant labor, and the toll it takes on workers’ bodies. Petra is only in her mid-thirties, but her injuries are already disabling: when the family arrives at the bungalow, Petra “watche[s] Estrella’s long legs leap over the tall blades of wild mustard grass, her own legs shackled by varicose veins” (8-9). The fact that Viramontes describes Petra’s legs as “shackled” is also ironic, given that she is a migrant worker who moves from place to place in order to survive; the work she does has worn her down so much that she’s no longer even able to do the bare minimum necessary to sustain employment.

Given that Estrella and her family harvest crops for a living, it’s not surprising that fruit and fruit imagery appear so frequently in Under the Feet of Jesus. Estrella, for instance, often thinks of the world around her in terms of the crops she picks; she talks about her mother’s varicose veins as “vines choking the movement of her legs,” and describes the sun as a “flat orange” (61, 49). In many ways, the constant recurrence of this motif serves to underscore the plight of the migrant workers. The workers’ lives are dominated by the crops they harvest, which they are forced to treat more carefully than their own bodies. Alejo, for example, insists that he and Gumecindo keep picking peaches after nightfall because “half of [the ones they’ve already picked] are going to bruise,” and “nobody buys fruits with bruises” (11, 12). When Alejo himself is bruised later in the novel, however, the only people who take any interest in his condition are his fellow workers.

Despite all of this, fruit is also a source of significant happiness and pleasure to the novel’s characters. When Alejo brings a bag of peaches to Estrella’s family, Estrella takes a “deep ravenous bite,” and when she herself later tosses a peach to another worker, he catches it with a “wide” smile (45, 57). The workers’ enjoyment of the peaches therefore underscores their ability to find joy and meaning in their difficult lives, whether through sensual pleasure (Estrella tasting the peach, or kissing Alejo), or through acts of kindness and generosity (giving away a peach she saved specially for herself).

Petra’s statue of Jesus is a symbol not only of Christianity, but also of the broader social institutions (like religion) that humans often rely on for support. Petra is a particularly devout character, so much so that one of the first things Perfecto considers when the family arrives at the bungalow is where she can set up her altar. In spite of Petra’s devotion, however, the statue breaks in the final chapter of the novel; Petra accidentally knocks it off the altar, and it loses its head. The decapitation coincides with Petra’s own waning ability to find comfort in religion: as she carries the statue’s head out onto the porch, she thinks about how “that was all she had: papers and sticks and broken faith and Perfecto, and at the moment all of this seemed as weightless against the massive darkness […] as the head she held” (168-69). In other words, the breaking of the statue points to the novel’s skepticism of Christianity as a form of solace for migrant workers, who instead should try to build faith in themselves and one another.

Perfecto’s toolbox, like his name, initially seem to symbolize his own skills and dependability. Although Estrella at first resents the presence of the tools because of their association with her mother’s new boyfriend, she quickly comes to see them as a means of wielding some power in the world; as she holds one, she “weigh[s] the significance it award[s] her” (26). Given that it’s men who traditionally use household tools, it seems likely that Estrella views Perfecto’s tools as a way of counteracting her powerlessness not only as a migrant worker, but also as a woman. It’s therefore significant that the character who most effectively uses the tools in the novel is in fact Estrella, when she smashes the nurse’s desk with a crowbar. In other words, if Perfecto’s tools are a symbol of agency, Estrella’s use of them mirrors the way in which she takes his place as the family leader by the end of Under the Feet of Jesus.

On the evening Estrella and her family arrive at the bungalow, Alejo and Gumecindo see a boy with a cleft lip playing nearby. It turns out that this boy often plays near the barn, and his facial disfigurement is the most prominent example of an image that recurs throughout Under the Feet of Jesus: missing or misshapen mouths. Once, when Estrella is talking to Maxine, for instance, she asks whether Maxine thinks they’ll give birth to mouthless children. On the most literal level, Estrella’s question refers to the effects of pesticide in the labor camp’s water, which the novel suggests are in fact responsible for many of the workers’ ailments—birth defects, cancer, and dysentery among them. However, the mouth imagery in the novel is also a symbolic representation of the voicelessness of migrant workers in America. In that light, it’s significant that when the boy near the barn stumbles and falls, Alejo can see that he’s crying but can’t hear him: “It seemed to Alejo that he was crying, though all he heard were the wind-tossed trees. Even the gaping hole of his own shirt hung like a speechless mouth on his belly” (22).

In Under the Feet of Jesus, insects frequently appear in connection with death. The connection between the two is sometimes fairly clear; as Estrella’s family discusses whether or not to take in the ailing Alejo, for instance, Perfecto’s attention is drawn repeatedly to the ground, where maggots—larva that often eat dead or decaying matter—are swarming. In other cases, however, the relationship hinges on the use of pesticide to kill insects that might harm crops: “Mealybug beetles dripped like crisp curls on Perfecto’s knees, then fell to the ground, and he studied the black beetles, the armor of their backs, their legs jetting and jerking” (80). This particular passage immediately precedes Perfecto’s memories of his stillborn child, which suggests a parallel between the two deaths: Mercedes’s baby was poisoned by pesticides in much the same way as the insects. The insects are therefore another symbol of the deadly consequences of working in the fields, particularly in Perfecto’s mind: he later dreams of “illness, his veins like irrigation canals clogged with dying insects, twitching on their backs, their little twig legs jerking” (100).