Preview

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar: Issue with Immigration

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1713 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar: Issue with Immigration
The United States, a place associated with hope, equal opportunity and freedom also faces many underlying issues. The idea of this “perfect” country has been corrupted with problems such as immigration, growing class division and most prominently the 2007 recession. These burdens have prevented people from living the “American Dream”, a concept that our country has over glorified. The root of these ongoing problems has not been properly addressed, preventing our nation from making any progress. Looking closely at the continuous problems that the Unites States has and still faces, it is viable to say that these issues revolve around capitalism. The novel, The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar illustrates how immigrants like Araceli are victimized due to unresolved issues with money and the recession. When Araceli is prosecuted for abusing and kidnapping the Torres-Thompson children, the case eventually transitions into an issue with immigration. As the case gains media attention people like Ian Goller and Janet Bryson express resentment toward Araceli. Within Araceli, Goller and Bryson saw a representation of immigrants, who in their mind were to blame for the issues that had erupted in “their” country, such as the everlasting recession. Janet Bryson exemplifies this anger and bitterness when she boldly states: “To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants […] contribute to their society [..] Look at our full prisons, our higher insurance rates, our lowering education standards”(325). Bryson and Goller’s actions symbolize the result of capitalism, the true villain within the novel. Capitalism has never been fully recognized as the true cause for many of the problems the U.S has faced causing immigrants like Araceli to be used as scapegoats for issues they had little influence in causing. As a result, capitalism can be seen as the barbarian in the novel, which in turn leads to barbaric actions on behalf of people like Goller and Bryson,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Abrego, Leisy. "Legitimacy, Social Identity, and the Mobilization of Law: The Effects of Assembly Bill 540 on Undocumented Students in California." Law & Social Inquiry 33.3 (2008): 709-734. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Capitalism is a system that forces the individual to play by its rules. These events or public changes to society are challenges that either help or hinder a group, a society or the individual. Events reinforce a person’s survival instincts and the capitalist is always in the middle trying to figure out how they could make money off of these events/challenges. Capitalism existence is inevitable but we allow it to further take advantages of the struggling and the greedy, the spirt of capitalism. This has been emphasized and drilled into the individual to believe they have a “duty” to this capitalism- to be rich and find riches at all cost. “…many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (p.274).” This is simply one sided, in which it enriches more of the 1 percent. This is where the “ideal types” become the influenced objective causes of actions. We work harder for the idea that we will rise only to indebt ourselves more and to…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    You always hear about the “American Dream” that people risk their life to be a part of. In this dream people are provided with equal opportunity to become successful through hard work. Capitalism is the foundation that allows this dream to become a reality, it creates a world in which your life is in your own hands. It is composed of four different aspects; individual ownership of property, free enterprise, reliance on markets, and competition. While there are downsides to every economic structure, capitalism is the most effective in creating the most efficient economy where competition is the main motivation to improve upon goods and services.…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Barbarian Nurseries

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Immigration to the United States of America has been monumental in the development of this great nation. In both The Barbarian Nurseries, written by Hector Tobar, and Summer of the Big Bachi, written by Naomi Hirahara, are centered around two characters that once moved to America from a foreign land, in hopes to have the American dream, the traditional social ideals of the United States, such as equality, democracy, and material prosperity. Both of the characters work in laborious fields and undergo scrutiny and interrogation of unfortunate circumstances that were out of their control. The strain that is put on immigrants from other countries is prominent in both of these captivating novels.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    How can we rescue American Capitalism from its current problems? The first thing to do to fix American capitalism is to know what capitalism is. Capitalism is an economic system market by private ownership, in which a free market distributes good. Although capitalism helped out the lives of citizens in America during a very bad economic time, it hasn’t always helped Americans. There are billions of people in our country that need help each and every day, but they are stuck in poverty. Government and non-profit organizations play a very important role in helping the billions of Americans that need help each day. However, if the government (or non-profits) were to work individually, it would take two to three times longer to help.…

    • 1926 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    America is in a perilous state. That is what Hedrick Smith, author of "Who Stole The American Dream", has taught me. This literary work takes it 's readers through America 's economic and political past, present and future with deep analysis. It questions our country 's fundamental roots and how they have gone astray. This book also comes from a very Democratic point of view. In most of his arguments, Smith 's theories and ideas will bash Republican actions. "Who Stole The American Dream" is an extremely detailed account of our country 's faults and figures.…

    • 2384 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Capitalism: a Love Story

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Capitalism: A Love Story examines the impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). The film moves from Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan. With both humor and outrage, the film explores the question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore goes into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story also presents what a more hopeful future could look like. Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do? Written by Overture Films…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Korten argues against what he calls “Corporate Libertarianism” which demands that all political, economic, and civic barriers to the free reign of corporate interests be demolished and for “Democratic Pluralism” which requires a “pragmatic, institutional balance between the forces of government, market, and civic society.” He maintains that America’s economic success through the 1950s and…

    • 120 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Capitalism: A Love Story

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages

    By the final year of George W. Bush’s tenure, capitalism was being criticized as a system of greed, exploitation and failure.…

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Capitalism is not a political system, but an economic one (Muhammed, Cedric).” A global economy has forced capitalism to value profits and the economy more than the citizens it is supposed to represent. People who live in a free market system will always desire to pay the cheapest price on a product they can (Sweatshops). The consumer’s aspiration to pay for cheap products drives the terrible sweatshops America has outlawed.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Political Apathy

    • 3068 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Capitalism is becoming more dominant, and not in the way that drives and causes the American Dream to thrive. Ed Hess from Forbes was very adamant in saying,” Over the last 25 years American Capitalism has become financialism, which is…

    • 3068 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    American Fall Apart

    • 2543 Words
    • 11 Pages

    When we look at a country as a whole what better idea than to target the head of state, the government for all the problems that we face in the United States. Yes we can say that most of our problems has a correlation with the government but as a whole country, everyone contributes to this idea of a capitalist society just by being a part of it. Because many of our United States citizens have learnt to work the capitalist system, we’ve as humans learnt how to be selfish not caring for others desires, and most other’s needs. We’ve somehow forgot what it means to be righteous, and have been influenced by society that feeding for ourselves is what will get you through. Through our actions, we have become a cold generation, and desirable one, like the economist just like author Anthony Burgess says, the United States, known to be the country where all dreams come true, seems like over the generations it has fallen apart.…

    • 2543 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The United States is a Capitalism System a System that has a small group of people who control large amounts of money, or capitol, make the most important economic decisions. This is true so Julie would probably say that The United States of America is considered a free market economy. The U.S has a Capitalist system. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individuals rights, including property rights in which all property is privately owned. There are two classes of capitalism. One is the capitalism class and the other is the working class. The capitalism class is a small group of people. These people basically sell their ability to work for a wage or salary. They own the group that produce and distribute goods. The working class is then paid to produce goods and services which are then sold for profit. This profit goes to the capitalism class because; they can make more money selling what the working class has made. The capitalist live off the profits the working class produces and make reinvestments on their profits to make more money. In capitalism the motive for producing goods is to sell them. They don’t care if they satisfy the people’s needs. They just want to sell and make money. The government is allowed to change the rules at any time. The state doesn’t directly give jobs so in times of a recession the unemployment levels can be very high.…

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetorical Technique

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages

    No one can argue that America is the country of the human rights and freedom and many people around the world dream to live in this great place. However, big problem is going to reshape the American society if nobody tried to solve it. The dilemma is simply that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer as a result of inequality of money distribution among rich and poor people.America had created a marvelous economic machine, but evidently it worked only for that at the top. Both Joseph E. Stieglitz and Timothy Noahintroduce a very critical issue which affects the American society in these days, is the widening gap between the rich and poor people. Stieglitz claims that the American economic system is failing for most of Americans and the inequality is increasing to the extent that one day will be unaffordable. The rising gap is created by the one top percent who are taking advantage of making a huge wealth. They are driven by their greed to accumulate big fortune upon poor’s shoulders. Stieglitz came up with some evidence to support his claim. One of these is the new statistics fromCensus Bureau’s statistics that shows that the one top percent gain 20 % of the total American income. Therefore, Noah says that this inequality income creates and retains the capitalism system which forms a serious threat upon middle and lower class (Noah The Great par 3).…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1. Does the global economic crisis signal that the American model of free market capitalism is fundamentally flawed?…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays