Under the Feet of Jesus Chapter Five Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapter Five

It is dark when the family arrives back at the bungalow. After the children are put to bed, Petra draws her usual circle around the house with a stick, to protect it against scorpions. Meanwhile, Perfecto stands by the car, weighing his options. He is angry and upset. He is certain that the clinic nurse called the police and that they are already searching the camps, looking for the family. Tonight, he expects, Petra will tell him she is pregnant. He should have known, he thinks, that he was too old to start another family. If he wants to leave, now is the time.

Inside the house, Petra worries about the consequences of the clinic incident. She sees Perfecto standing by the car, and she senses what he is thinking. She goes inside to make an offering of candles and incense at the altar. Beneath the feet of the Jesus statue is an envelope. She looks at the documents inside: certificates of birth, baptism, and marriage, a Social Security card, an ID card, and an award certificate Estrella won in school for an essay. As Petra returns the documents to their original location, the Jesus statue falls and the head breaks off. Holding the head in her hand, Petra walks back out to the porch. She fears that her efforts to care for her family are not enough. If anyone can repair the Jesus statue, Petra thinks, Perfecto can.

Estrella remembers how she left Alejo at the hospital. He was afraid he would die, and he wanted her to stay with him. She couldn’t, with the family outside and the car’s engine running. She told him he would be fine, and then she left. She now realizes she might never see him alive again. Hearing the sound of the breaking Jesus statue, Estrella throws on some clothes and goes onto the porch to make sure Petra is okay. Her mother holds her tight, but then Estrella gets a gas lantern and makes her way to the barn, over her mother’s objections.

Inside the barn, Estrella climbs the rusty chain into the loft and then climbs out the trapdoor onto the roof. She looks up in wonder at the starry night sky, and she is filled with confidence in herself. She believes her heart to be “powerful enough to summon home all those who strayed.”

Analysis: Chapter Five

When the family returns to the bungalow after bringing Alejo to the hospital, Petra uses a stick to meticulously redraw the circle in the dust that she made around the house when they first came there, a symbol of the system of religion and folk belief she uses to keep her family safe. She draws the circle out of a belief that scorpions will not cross an unbroken line, so this circle keeps her children safe from their poisonous stings. Indeed, when they first arrived at the house, there was already a scorpion inside. Perfecto killed it, but as the family seems poised at the brink of collapse, Petra cannot count on his protection, as emphasized by her counting as he slams each of the car’s doors in turn as she draws. In this chapter, Viramontes describes the stick she uses as a weapon. As the car doors slam, Petra thinks in turn of various losses and threats to her family, from Estrella’s unstoppable rush into an adulthood fraught with the same romantic dangers that have hurt Petra to her own mother’s rejection of Petra when she became pregnant with Estrella. Viramontes describes this rejection as a slamming door, suggesting that Perfecto’s door slamming foreshadows his abandonments of Petra and her children.

In this chapter, Viramontes uses the doily Petra keeps on her altar as a symbol of the intergenerational connection among women, which lasts even beyond the time they are physically together. This is an aspect of the novel’s theme of the power of women. Petra keeps the doily on her altar because it is special, an item crocheted by her grandmother. Petra touches the doily seeking the comfort of that connection. Her touch is like the touch she gives to the faces of her children, indicating that the doily, like the children, represents the continuity of her family, specifically the women of the family. The creation of the doily was in itself a source of comfort to her nervous grandmother during the illness and death of Petra’s father, a symbol of maternal work withstanding the loss of men, as Petra’s mothering withstands the loss of her husband and potentially will survive the loss of Perfecto. The doily lies like a blessing on top of the envelope of precious legal documents that Petra stores in the altar, “under the feet of Jesus,” representing Petra’s hopes that both religion and female family strength will protect her children.

The novel ends where it begins, in the barn, which in this chapter represents Estrella claiming her power to control her own destiny. Throughout the story others have discounted the value of the barn, just as they have discounted Estrella’s power. In this scene, Estrella moves with purpose, as though she knows exactly what to do. Her drive represents the adulthood that is arriving for her as an unstoppable force, as Petra has realized it will, no matter what warnings she provided in attempts to hold her daughter back. Although Petra would like to leave her altar candles burning as a vigil for her children, she does not, but Estrella does leave her own lamp lit as she begins to climb the chain to the top of the barn, indicating a passing of power from mother to daughter. Viramontes describes the muscles of Estrella’s arms and legs as she climbs, an embodiment of the theme throughout the book of the strength of the workers. When Estrella reaches the roof, she sees the stars as diamonds, another symbol of power passing to her from Petra, who has wished that she could crochet diamonds as her grandmother did to give herself strength. When Estrella reaches the top of the roof, Viramontes describes her as unaware finally of her sweat, transcending her identity as only a laborer. The final image of the book demonstrates the theme of the power of workers, particularly women, to unite, using physical and spiritual strength. Estrella stands as an “angel” and as a beacon summoning her people together, strong because she at last believes in her own power.

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