Under the Feet of Jesus

In Viramontes’ novel Under the Feet of Jesus, the image of a barn is one that is used repeatedly to introduce new concepts in Estrella’s life, symbolizing her discovery of a new sense of self and voice.  The barn may also be a symbol of the collective experiences of a generation of Hispanic migrant workers, portraying their hardships and collective journey as well as Estrella’s personal development. 

The barn is first introduced as a symbol of the uncertainty of Estrella’s family’s circumstances.  Viramontes says in Chapter one that “the silence and the barn and the clouds meant many things.  It was always a question of work, and work depended on the harvest, the car running, their health, the conditions of the road, how long the money held out, and the weather, which meant they could depend on nothing.”  To Estrella’s family, the barn reveals the difficult conditions of their working lifestyle and the fact that they do not have control over any of the things that will allow them to have enough money to survive.  The novel begins with an air of forced dependence on the undependable and a certain despairing quality that makes us believe that Estrella and her family have a significant amount of hardship to overcome before they are seen as powerful.  Estrella and her sisters look at the barn and call it a “cathedral,” evoking the idea of religion and a concept bigger than she or her family.  She looks at the barn with a sort of awe and respect as a new sort of frontier. Perfecto, her step-father and the man thirty-seven years her mother’s senior, however, knows that it is bound to collapse at some point and he bellows at the girls to get out of the barn.  Perfecto’s point of view throughout the book is that of a realist, he knows what it is like to work day in and day out, and he has knowledge of how to barter for services that he needs.  Perfecto is the image of the quintessential male migrant worker with a family who has endured personal hardship and overcome, but remains in a difficult spot trying to provide for his family.  “It seemed [Perfecto’s] very existence contradicted the laws of others, so that everything he did, like eat and sleep and work and love was prohibited…he committed himself to tearing the barn down.  The money was essential to get home before home became so distant, he wouldn’t be able to remember his way back.” (83)  The imagery of Perfecto getting the girls out of the barn portrays his role as a father figure, aware of the dangers of their position in life and knowledgeable about the hardships of being a migrant worker, having little voice and feeling weak instead of powerful.  The barn image is repeated again when Estrella is trying to learn how to spell and read and she meets Alejo.  She explains that “she wanted to tell him how good she felt, but didn’t know how to build the house of words she could invite him into…Build rooms as big as barns.”  (70)  This is a new step in Estrella’s life as she tries to learn how to communicate with Alejo and tell him about her life.  She associates words and possibility and ideas with the bigness of the barn that she experienced, but she doesn’t know how to put her emotions into words.  The fact that Estrella associates her self-expression with the barn, a symbol of work and hardship, reveals how fully encompassed she is in a life of labor as a teenage girl.  Again, the barn symbolizes an idea that is bigger than she knows what to do with; although she knows that there is potential for a greater self-expression through language, the only way that she knows how to express it at this point is by remembering the grandness of the barn, and making it her goal.

The last chapter portrays the barn as an object overcome by Estrella as she finds her voice by climbing to the top of the barn physically.  She has found her voice in other ways such as standing up for Alejo in the nurse’s office and getting her family’s money back, Petra gets an identification card proving her autonomy and Estrella finally understands that she has to rely on herself to overcome hardship.  “What made her believe that a circle drawn in the earth would keep the predators away?  That was all she had, papers and sticks and broken faith” (169)  Previously, Estrella had said that she never asked why they believed that a circle around the house would keep out scorpions, but the fact that she decides to finally ask reveals a newfound self-reliance that she didn’t have before.  Estrella climbs the barn and finds herself on the roof “as immobile as an angel standing on the verge of faith.  Like the chiming bells of the great cathedrals, she believed her heart powerful enough to summon home all those who strayed.”  (176) Unlike her past description of the barn, the symbol of her circumstances, being described as a cathedral, she describes her own heart as a cathedral.  This shows the shift in her viewpoint from viewing her circumstances as greater than herself and too big for her, to seeing herself as having the power to overcome her circumstances. 

Estrella gives herself and her own voice power by relating her heart to a cathedral and stating that she is standing on the verge of faith.  This faith, instead of faith in the undependable is instead a faith in her own abilities as Estrella finally overcomes the barn, the symbol of oppression and her difficult circumstances.