Preview

Devil Highway

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
786 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Devil Highway
The Devil’s Highway
By Luis Alberto Urrea

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea traces the journeys of twenty-six men traveling across the border through one of the most treacherous deserts known to man “The Devil’s Highway.” The author’s purpose was to let the world be aware of the events going on all around, with the simple modes of persuasion (pathos, ethos, and logos) Urrea makes you consider what worlds, political and economic, have we created that push humans into impossible journeys? What borders have we imposed, both geopolitical and cultural, that separate human beings so completely?
The author’s narrative, ripe with horrifying descriptions, is nonetheless told with compassion appealing to the emotions of the audience in his argument. The greater part of the book follows these men on their unlucky journey through the desert, and how each one is drained of their money, water, hopes and dreams, and for some, life. The author uses compelling descriptions of imagery; the taste of urine, the sight of mummified corpses, and the anguish of losing one's son are all strikingly portrayed. The reader finds themselves horrified each time death reaches another victim of the Devil’s Highway, forcing you to think about the family waiting in Mexico dreaming of a better life. At the beginning of the book Urrea lists the possessions of the dead (“John Doe # 37: no effects, John Doe # 44: Mexican bills in back pocket, a letter in right front pocket, a brown wallet in left front pocket”) these specific details provided are emotional responses to give the readers every last detail of the man and his possessions. Another technique Urrea uses that affects the audiences emotions is grammatical persons, Urrea often switches into second-person point-of-view so the reader imagines that he or she is going through the stages of hypothermia themselves. “Your muscles, lacking water, feed on themselves. They break down and start to rot. Once rotting in you, they dump rafts of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    A vast range of literary techniques is employed in the text, all of which contribute to exploring the negative outcome of journeys. Imagery is a predominant throughout the entire text, appealing to the auditory, olfactory, tactile and visual senses. This is highly effective in depicting the wild beauty and the horror of nature. Quotes such as “…the clouds brewing above and the dirt swirling around his feet” and “skyline rushing down to drown his brittle form” conjure up images of the uncontrollable force of nature and the insignificance of humans in comparison. Fudge also encompasses more harsh imagery to further reinforce the harshness of life. This is evident in the quotes, “…spluttered mucus and blood” and “…covered in crusted blood, jaws ripped from his skull”. All these descriptions are then directly linked to nature’s ferocity. Fudge has characterised “The Land” as nature’s representation in the text. He emphasises and reinforces The Land by encompassing heavy use of personification. “the Land was speaking”, “the Land throbbing” and “the Land had suffocated his family” all use personification. The repeated use of ‘the’ before the subject, ‘Land’, combined with the effect of personification, emphasises and reinforces the authority and dominance of nature.…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Going to the Moon

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages

    3. The author develops the tension between cultures often felt by those who immigrate to a new land by describing the setting in the beginning of the story as purgatory and called it a temporary stop. The author also uses words such as “hell” and images such as “the buildings stood unnaturally still and crisp in the cold air” to describe how they look at the new place as.…

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Devils Highway

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the beginning of the novel, Urrea gives us background knowledge on the Devils Highway, the illegal immigrants crossing the border, and information on the Border Patrol Officers. Immigrants not having any income at all, they need to survive as well. In Mexico it was very hard to get a job, with that being said, woman with children, men with children, families in this case needed to survive. “Prices kept raising, and all families, mestizos, and Indian, Mexican and illegal, Protestant, Catholic, or heathen were able to afford less and less. Food was harder to come by. Families continued to grow” (44). These Mexicans needed money to survive; they needed better opportunities that Mexico was not offering them. Coming to America was their only choice. Not coming legally, these walkers took a chance at life down the “dangerous border”(8). It was a chance worth taking. “Good guys”, these immigrants were trying to better there future no matter what it took. Why couldn’t the Border Patrol accept that? The Devils Highway was a road leading to a rude awakening, wasn’t that bad enough.…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout physical journeys there are many aspects contained within. These aspects are what shape and form people throughout their journey. The most notable aspect of a physical journey is overcoming the barriers and obstacles which are confronted throughout the journey. This idea is evident within the prescribed texts “Migrants”, “Last seen at 12:10am” and also thought the related text “Rising from the ashes”.…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paradise Road

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages

    It is intrinsically human to experience conflict; thus, we will all be forced to respond to conflict at various times and in various forms throughout the course of our lives, and in order to live serenely we attempt to avoid and resolve conflict. Whilst conflict may merely involve two parties disagreeing over minor differences of opinion (the permutations of which being largely insignificant), we have seen throughout history that major conflicts in the form of war and international political unrest, lead many to experience horrific and life-changing conflicts of a larger scale. Our challenge is to deal with conflict that might be well beyond the reaches of our control, and wholly influenced by the actions of others. Noting the diverse contexts of such conflict, what emerges is the extraordinary way that we can be tested, and how we emerge from such harrowing circumstances. We begin to question not the battle itself- conflict has occurred and will occur again- but the human behavior behind the conflict and our responses to such conditions. Those who experience conflict are truly tested and the core of their characters brought into sharp focus as they make sense of their experiences and those of the people around them. For the woman incarcerated at the end of Bruce Bereford’s ‘Paradise Road’ it is the conflict of enduring a war and all that this encompasses, including cultural prejudice and misunderstanding, violence and torture. For others in our world’s recent history such as Nelson Mandela, it was the conflict of enduring persistent ignorance, discrimination and injustice. Through the stories of these people we can see that while conflict can often breed further disagreement and suffering, it may indeed prompt some to act in extraordinary ways that are bigger and more complex than they might have realized themselves. They are led to articulate through their responses to conflict, who they…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Devils Highway

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Have you ever wonder why they built borders? Or who built them? Or who prevents and controls illegals from crossing, and what they do to accomplish them from crossing? In the book, The Devils Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea defines the effects the desert has to offer for the immigrant’s entrance. The Devils High Way is a measureless desert past Mexico and Sonora, which is one of the most isolated and driest deserts in the U.S. This is a desert which few people confront to cross through, some barley make it out alive. In the year of 2001 and the month of May, a group of undocumented Mexican walkers were left for death, stuck in the Devils Highway after walking for days in the wrong path, through the deserts and mountains, with only a few quantity of water.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Devils Highway

    • 934 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Luis Alberto Urrea is an author who wrote a book based on an investigative report concerning the twenty six men who attempted to cross the Mexican border in 2001. This deadly desert and fascinating book is titled “The Devil’s Highway”. Many souls that attempted to cross this died whether it was for pleasure or for opportunity. Both intentions ended in tragedy.…

    • 934 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Devils Highway Summary

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages

    the men are from and gives you the opportunity to know who they are. Most…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story is packed with imagery and figurative language. The language used by the author to describe the lake as "fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and charred remains of bonfires" (129) creates an image of chaos and uncertainty. This also parallels the boy's uncertainty in their journey to and from badness. Boyle use of similes to expand on his descriptions such as "my heart turning over like a dirt bike in the wrong gear" (131) to drives home to the reader the intensity of the fight between the greasy character and the boys. The author also uses several metaphors and personification to give more detail and feeling to the story. For example: "Behind me, the girl's screams rose intensity, disconsolate, incriminating, the screams of a Sabine women, the Christian martyrs, Ann Frank dragged from the garret" (132). This metaphor demonstrates how truly horrific their act had been and the realization of the consequences of their actions. The use of personification by the narrator to describe the body as a "victim bobbing sorrowfully in the lake at my back" (134) illustrates the narrators feeling of pity for the dead greasy character by giving his lifeless body a sorrowful emotion. This helps the narrator to connect some of the bad outcomes of being "bad". Boyle use of informal/streetwise diction and irony helps to communicate the experiences of teenage boys trying to be bad. The raw and direct ways the story is told reflects the unpredictability of being a…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Breaking Down Constructs: The Path from Resistance to Reconciliation What is the purpose of a border? Is it more than a line that separates two things? In an interview, American-Canadian author Thomas King explains how “borders are these very artificial and subjective barriers that we throw up around our lives in all sort of ways. National borders are just indicative of the kinds of borders we build around ourselves” (qtd.…

    • 1706 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Death fascinates humans because it represents the unknown. In Julio Cortázar’s story “Axolotl”, he conveys a fascination with the stillness that provokes a notion about death. The story follows an unnamed character who goes to see the axolotls at the aquarium. In the first paragraph, the narrator reveals that he is an axolotl. Then he explains how he came upon the axolotls. One spring morning, the unnamed narrator goes to the Jardin des Plantes. When he gets there, he sees that lions are sad, and the panther is sleeping. He decides to see banal fish at the aquarium, but he feels a connection with the axolotls and watches them for hours. An axolotl is a Mexican salamander that retains larval characteristics into adulthood. After his first encounter…

    • 238 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Garcia Márquez Childhood

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages

    García Márquez writes a masterpiece about a emotional childhood experience that greatly impacted him for his whole life. Márquez stars off the expert by writing, ¨While the train stood there I had the sensation that we were not altogether alone. But when it pulled away, with an immediate, heart- wrenching blast of its whistle, my mother and I were left forsaken beneath the infernal sun, and all the heavy grief of the town came down on us." The first two sentences vividly paint a picture of an isolated and abandoned town. "The interiors of the houses floated in a limbo of lethargy. In some it was so unbearable that people would hang their hammocks in the courtyard or place chairs in the shade of the almond trees and sleep sitting up in the middle…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Grave”, The author develops the feeling of riveting shock shooting through the character, the moment he notices that he just took the life of a Rabbit who was on its…

    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Human decay in ‘Blood River,’ is quite perceptible about the ‘sickly child.’ The use of a premodifier can cause anxiety and worry towards the reader and himself. It can easily be conjured up in Butcher’s mind as human decay because of the ‘fever’ and being ‘wide –eyed,’ signify a slow death.…

    • 1576 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Road

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Living in a post-apocalyptic world would leave one feeling terrified, alone, and on the brink of going mad, but it is hard to imagine these feelings to the actual extent. In the book The Road, McCarthy is able to draw the readers in for them to experience the real emotions of living in a post-apocalyptic world. The readers are able to feel this fear and realness because McCarthy impersonalizes the two main characters and clearly depicts the differences of life before and after the traumatic experience.…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays