The Brick People: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Brick People: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the lives and interactions of key figures in a narrative centered around a Mexican immigrant community in the United States during the early to mid-20th century. The central character, Octavio Revueltas, navigates the complexities of labor exploitation in a company town while striving to support his family and engage with the union movement. His wife, Nana de León, emerges as a strong-willed partner, determined to carve out an independent life for her family amidst the challenges of cultural expectations and economic hardship.
The tension between the Revueltas family and the Simons, the family that owns the brickyard, is exemplified through characters like Walter Robey Simons, who tries to understand his workers while grappling with his own detachment. Other characters, such as Malaquias de León and Rosendo Guerrero, contribute to the narrative by highlighting issues of authority, identity, and resilience within the community. The story also touches on the experiences of Arturo Revueltas, the couple's son, whose struggles with racism and cultural identity reflect broader societal challenges faced by Chicano youth. Overall, the analysis presents a rich tapestry of character dynamics that illustrate themes of family, resistance, and cultural identity in the face of adversity.
The Brick People: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Alejandro Morales
First published: 1988
Genre: Novel
Locale: Southern California
Plot: Historical realism
Time: The 1890's to the 1940's
Octavio Revueltas (ohk-TAH-vee-oh rreh-VWEHL-tahs), a Mexican immigrant who arrives at Simons brickyard during the Mexican Revolution. He becomes an expert brickmaker and learns to gamble in order to supplement his income. When he weds Nana de León in 1926, they begin a family whose children will be first-generation Chicanos and Chicanas, people of Mexican descent born and reared in the United States. Octavio becomes increasingly interested in the union movement because he believes that the Simons family exercises too much control over the workers' lives in what is essentially a company town. During the Great Depression, Octavio makes contact with several unions. The Simons workers strike in 1937, but the strike is broken by scabs, and union solidarity disintegrates. Octavio retreats to his family convinced that working conditions will never improve. His direct experience of exploitation and racism makes him wary of the Anglo-American world outside the brickyard. Unlike his wife, Octavio struggles to resist assimilation into the dominant culture.
Nana de León Revueltas (leh-OHN), a strong and intelligent woman who is determined to establish her family's independence and better its economic situation. As a young woman, she elopes with Octavio Revueltas and moves to his parents' home. For the next few years, much of her energy is spent trying to set up an autonomous existence for her husband and children, away from the extended family and the authority of her mother-in-law; at one point, she actually moves the family without advising Octavio. Nana believes that the stubborn dominance of the Chicano-Mexicano male is a product of his oppression and low self-esteem.
Walter Robey Simons, one of the heirs of the family business, who competes with his brother Joseph until the latter's death. Unlike his brother, Walter is interested in Mexican culture, because he believes that an understanding of his employees' mentality will allow him to maintain control of them. After the death of his first wife, Sara, he marries a classical pianist who compares the adaptability and persistence of the Mexican worker to that of the cockroach. Both the Great Depression and the strike at Simons drive Walter into the role of absentee owner; his business affairs are managed by others as he travels through Europe with his wife. In Paris, he chokes to death on a swarm of brown insects.
Malaquias de León (mahl-ah-KEE-ahs), one of the first workers who challenges the authority of the Simons company and its surrogates. His confrontation with the foreman, Gonzalo Pedroza, sets the stage for his eventual firing and departure from the brickyard. Because he attains a relative economic independence through the sale of horses, he is able to move his family to a nearby barrio; however, he fails to raise the money for the land he had always wanted to own.
Rosendo Guerrero (rroh-SEHN-doh geh-RREH-roh), the first foreman, who helps Joseph Simons learn the brickmaking business and who designs the first brickyard. Rosendo's parents were killed in Mexico during the Napoleonic occupation, and Rosendo escaped to Los Angeles, where he met a Simons cousin who taught him the basic procedures for making bricks. He later becomes friends with Walter Simons, to whom he is close in age, and urges him to travel to Mexico in order to learn more about its culture. His death is mysterious and seems to have been part of a sacrificial ritual linked to ancient American Indian religious practices.
Arturo Revueltas (ahr-TEW-roh), the firstborn son of Nana and Octavio. Arturo experiences racism in the school system and drops out at the age of fourteen. As a young child, he is labeled “retarded” by Anglo-American schoolteachers who are unaware of or uninterested in the problems of bilingual students. During World War II, he is drawn to the young Chicanos known as zoot-suiters, but his mother forbids him to wear the zoot-suiters' distinctive wardrobe. The final scene of the novel finds Arturo listening to his father's memories of the journey north as the two men prepare to build the family's new home.