Race Relations/Racial Discrimination
More that just the memoirs of a talented writer and poet the novel is a personal documentation of the very real, very crushing reality of racial discrimination. What makes it all the more poignant is the fact that the author-narrator had such high hopes that the barriers that kept him an his family from living a dignified life are present, perhaps even more so, in the nation that he fancied to be “the land of milk and honey.”
Family/Family Dynamics
The author-narrator is also critical of certain familial practices in the Philippines that are ultimately coping mechanisms for the crippling poverty they experience. Practices such as pitting all their hopes on one child in a desperate gamble to free themselves from poverty, breaking up the family unit by having husband and wife living separate lives so that the husband can work and the wife rears the children by herself, and relying on child labor.
“The American Dream”/Hope
A major theme in the novel is the pursuit of “The American Dream” roughly defined as freedom to pursue prosperity, success, and upward social mobility for their families through hard work in a society that enables that goal. The novel, essentially the author-narrator’s life, is a chronicle of how he and his family struggle and overcome trial after trial in pursuit of that dream. It is interesting to note that despite the many disappointments he never wavered at chasing after it. The novel ends with the hopeful sentiment that although the reality failed to live up to the dream it is not a failed dream so much as an unfinished one.
Social Commentary
The novel is also critical of usurious, predatory practices of the rich and the landed in the Philippines, exploiting sharecroppers and hired labor alike. It is interesting to note though that this practice is also carried out in the US thus prompting the reader to ask: “if this evil is also present in America, then what is the source of this evil?” Although the author-narrator makes no attempt to answer this obliquely asked question the answer is quite evident: the wellspring of this social cancer is the very evil that lies in the soul of mankind.