32 pages • 1 hour read
Luis Alberto UrreaThe House of Broken Angels
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Then (En Aqual Entonces)”
Chapter 7 Summary: “Untitled”
Big Angel recalls his childhood in La Paz. Don Segundo is a motorcycle police officer, and Big Angel watches the city flash by as colors and scents on the back of his father’s bike. He meets Perla in the police station after her older brother is in a car accident. He falls in love immediately. Don Segundo lets the family off the hook because he noticed Big Angel’s romantic interest in Perla. Soon, Big Angel is visiting the Castros’ restaurant every day to spend time with Perla. Big Angel’s romance is cut short when Chentebent, his pirate uncle, comes to town. Big Angel is sent off to live on a boat with his aunt, uncle, and cousin because Mamá América and Don Segundo are divorcing and they fear Angel’s response. Don Segundo moves to Tijuana to be with his new lover, and from there he moves to America. Meanwhile, Big Angel is chronically abused and left hungry on Chente’s boat. No one in Mazatlán likes Chente because he’s a cruel drunk. Big Angel reflects, “When the church bells rang, he felt that the world he knew was in some other land. Was too far away to ever be found again” (119).
Big Angel sends Perla a love letter and learns she found someone else in his absence. Big Angel is devastated but does not give up. He starts saving money to make a life for them. One night, when Chente comes in to abuse him, Angel hits him on the side of the head. Chente falls off the side of the boat into the water and doesn’t resurface. Big Angel is shocked and terrified. He takes fuel cans and pours them over the boat and then takes a bus back to La Paz. He never tells a soul what happened. Soon Big Angel is reunited with Perla, whose first husband drowned diving for oysters. He takes in her boys, and they move to San Diego, living in shoddy apartments on the border. Big Angel works all day and night to feed them. Perla struggles with their newfound American poverty and chooses who to feed, determining that she and Minnie will have less to eat. Eventually, Big Angel saves up to rent a house. Yndio hates Big Angel and flees as soon as he can, while Braulio and the older boys find money and marginal success in street gangs. In the present, the past catches up to Big Angel as he trots back to bed in the early hours, before dawn, when he is able to forget that soon he will be dead.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Analysis
Sexism and masculinity are on display in this section, which portrays Don Segundo and the gender roles that define the de la Cruz family. Don Segundo is the patriarch and symbol of power—the motorcycle he rides is a physical manifestation of the power he wields over his wife and children. The fact that the children are forbidden to touch the motorcycle, and that they want nothing more than to play on it, symbolizes the allure of power for these abandoned children.
Sexism is also on display in Perla’s treatment of Minnie. When the family is starving, she says, “Minnie? She could go hungry like Perla. It wouldn’t do to be a fat Mexican girl anyway” (123). Urrea makes it clear that there is an expectation for Mexican women to be desirable, and for Mexican men to use sex to display their power. The racialized element of this sexual power comes into play when Don Segundo has an affair with a white woman. He chooses the power of sex with an American woman over his own family because his Mexican wife does not have the racial and economic privilege of his mistress.
In these plays for power—sexual, racial, and gendered—the characters fight to survive. A theme of violence and survival plagues the family: Big Angel murders his abuser, Chentebent, and Braulio kills and is killed by gang members. The cycle of death, which comes from a desire to survive against all odds, is the cornerstone of the family’s grief.
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By Luis Alberto Urrea
