Every piece of property, every social interaction, every public space in the story’s
California landscape is carefully marked off and delimited, broken into small individual spaces. To the residents of Arroyo Blanco, these boundaries almost limit the individual’s very sense of self. When Kyra loses her dog Sacheverell to the coyote, she takes the animal’s attack as a highly personal invasion of the sanctity of her space. Losing the dog is terrible, of course, but it becomes far worse when it happens within the fenced­in boundary of the Mossbacher backyard. The violation of these boundaries (their home, state parks, Delaney’s car) terrifies Delaney and Kyra because each intrusion breaks down the firm boundaries of their private world.
The idea …show more content…
As Jack Jardine tells Delaney, “This society isn’t what it was ­­ and it won’t be until we get control of the borders” (p. 101). Although Delaney responds, “That’s racist, Jack, and you know it,” it doesn’t take long for him to come around to the same viewpoint.
The events playing out in Arroyo Blanco mirror the larger debates over immigration and illegal aliens that occupy the minds of Californians
The phrase “The Tortilla Curtain” brings to mind a comparison with the Iron Curtain; they aren’t the same, of course, but both are dedicated to keeping certain people on certain sides of a rather arbitrary line. The Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were often criticized for the rigor with which they kept their own citizens from crossing their national borders. In modern America, the same sort of rigor is employed in keeping illegal immigrants out, and Boyle questions the wisdom of this policy.
Ultimately, boundaries divide people and things from one another. Boyle does not hold up a strong alternative to this depth of segmentation he sees in American society, but he does do a powerful job of showing its danger and ultimate futility.
Do the walls and gates around Arroyo Blanco work?
In some ways the boundaries around Arroyo Blanco help to keep out …show more content…
They’re right ­­ coyotes cannot jump that high ­­ but the coyote finds a way over the new fence again to snatch Kyra’s second dog.
The gates also cannot keep crime at bay. Burglaries persist after the gate goes up as the criminals, like the coyotes, simply adapt their tactics to the new situation. The novel doesn’t tell us whether the new wall proves any more effective at safeguarding the community, but the implied answer is that it cannot.
But Boyle’s point about such boundaries extends beyond the practical questions of whether such devices will work well or not. Even if the walls and locks and gates are one hundred percent effective, he appears to ask, is the resulting separation of culture and class and wealth such a good thing, even to the rich folks on the inside of the wall?
His answer is an unqualified no, because a wall doesn’t simply keep things out, it also lock things inside. Living within an insulated community can easily breed vices of its own. No better example of this exists in the book than Jack Jr, son of the prime mover behind the new wall. Jack Jardine senior wants the wall up to keep out the likes