Under the Feet of Jesus Chapter Four Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapter Four

Late in the afternoon, after getting help with the car from some other workers driving by, the family arrives at the clinic. The clinic nurse was about to close up, but she reluctantly takes a look at Alejo. Estrella tells the nurse that Perfecto and Petra are husband and wife, and that Alejo is their nephew. Petra finds the whole clinic setup phony and the nurse’s perfume nauseating. The nurse says that Alejo is dehydrated, and she guesses that he has dysentery (a bacterial infection of the intestine). Alejo, she says, needs to go to the hospital in Corazón. The family debates this suggestion in Spanish, balancing Alejo’s need for treatment against the risk that he will be deported, despite having been born in Texas. They also don’t know how to pay for the cost of hospital treatment.

Perfecto finally decides for the family. They will take Alejo to the hospital. The nurse makes some notes for the clinic records and asks for ten dollars. Perfecto empties his pockets but comes up just under a dollar short. This is money the family needs badly, to pay for gas. Perfecto offers to do some maintenance work at the clinic instead. The nurse turns down the offer and takes the money. At this, Estrella goes out to the car and comes back with a crowbar. She demands the money back from the nurse, and when the nurse refuses, Estrella slams the crowbar down on the desk, scattering files and smashing photos of the nurse’s children. Frightened and tearful, the nurse lets Estrella take the money back out of the cash box. On the way to Corazón, the family buys a quarter-tank of gas. Alejo, barely conscious, tells Estrella that he is not worth what her behavior will cost the family.

When the car arrives at the hospital, Perfecto leaves the engine running, because he is afraid that the car will not start again if he shuts it off. Perfecto tells Estrella to take Alejo inside and leave him. “They will take care of him, believe me,” he says. She follows his instructions. As she comes back out of the hospital, Estrella impresses the twins with her ability to make the automatic glass doors slide apart with a wave of her hands. Soon, the family is back on the road.

Analysis: Chapter Four

Throughout the novel, Viramontes intermingles English and Spanish, showing the bilingual way in which the Chicano farmworkers live their lives, mixing languages and also national habits to create their own hybrid culture. In Chapter Four, however, when the family seeks help from the clinic nurse, her inability or refusal to understand anything but English represents white American culture’s refusal to accept Chicanos as full Americans. Beyond just not understanding Spanish, the nurse mispronounces Alejo’s name and assumes he does not understand English. A frustrated Estrella lies and tells her that he is the spelling bee champ of Hidalgo County, Texas, underscoring her insistence that he is indeed a full American. Not knowing his last name, Estrella states that it is “Hidalgo,” as if forcing the nurse to write that word on his form will somehow prove his citizenship. In other parts of the book, Viramontes writes dialogue and phrases spoken in Spanish directly as Spanish. However, in this scene, as Petra tells Estrella in Spanish what she should say to the nurse in English, Viramontes writes Petra’s words in English, allowing even a reader who cannot read Spanish to remain allied with the family rather than the nurse and by extension the mainstream culture that rejects the Chicano workers. This subtle adjustment of the novel’s form emphasizes the theme of the dignity and completeness of Chicano culture despite the failure of American culture to accept them as belonging or even as worthy of recognition and care.

As Estrella exits the hospital after leaving Alejo, the twins watch with wonder as she triggers the automatic doors such that they open “as if obeying her command,” an image representing the power Estrella is learning to claim and wield in the closing of the book. As she leaves the hospital, she herself is aware of the emptiness of her hands, hands that have been holding Alejo, literally and figuratively. However, seeing the twins watching her inspires her to make a grand gesture, lifting and spreading her arms to trigger the door. The twins see this as her parting the doors “like a sea of glass,” an iconic reference to Moses raising his arms and parting the Red Sea. They are struck by her power and magic. This image is representative of the power Estrella has claimed with her hands in this chapter by using the crowbar to intimidate the nurse into returning their money. After they leave the clinic, Estrella tells Perfecto they will work together to tear down the barn, as if having used the crowbar represents her transition into the kind of adult he is. Perfecto is often described in terms of the power of his hands. In this section of the book, Viramontes transfers that power to Estrella’s hands.

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