By Lizzy Lyons-Beal
Published in 1995, Helena María Viramontes’ novel Under the Feet of Jesus primarily follows the story of Estrella, the eldest daughter of migrant workers, as she navigates love, loss, and adolescence in the California grape fields. Over the course of the novel, Viramontes masterfully explores Estrella’s many rich, complicated personal relationships—from her duty to her family, to her infatuation with the young piscadore Alejo. Yet there is one relationship of Estrella’s that, though it falls outside of the realm of standard human connection, is remarkably constant and deeply meaningful: her relationship with a barn.
The old barn on her family’s lot is a vital character of its own throughout the narrative, as Estrella often seeks it during her most life-changing experiences; it is the first thing she looks at when her family moves into the bungalow, it is her destination after her first ever romantic encounter, and, following her separation from Alejo, it is the site of her final spiritual pilgrimage. Although the barn’s role changes, its presence is consistent, and it always seems to fulfill Estrella’s needs in the moment—whether they include satisfying her desire for companionship, agency, or even enlightenment. To this end, I submit that Estrella’s barn functions like a mirror within the text; she projects her innermost thoughts and feelings onto the barn, and consequently uses it as a means for personal reflection. Her connection with this barn allows her to both satisfy her most basic needs, as well as confront her deepest anxieties on her journey toward self-actualization.
One of the reasons Estrella grows so attached to the abandoned, decrepit barn behind her family’s bungalow is that she identifies with it. When Perfecto asks for her help in tearing it down, she anthropomorphizes the rickety structure and considers the cruelty of its dismemberment:
It’s not fair . . . The nails would screech and the wood would moan and she would pull the veins out and the woodsheet would collapse like a toothless mouth . . . Is that what happens? Estrella thought, people just use you until you’re all used up, then rip you into pieces when they’re finished using you? (Viramontes 74-75)
Her mental image of the barn being physically tortured reveals just how personal this kind of pain is to Estrella; it is a projection of the pain she feels as a piscadore. She supports her family by doing backbreaking work for long, grueling hours, all for an industry that views migrant workers as dispensable extensions of the commodities they harvest. Estrella is afraid that she and the barn will share the same fate—that she, too, will ultimately be “used up” and discarded.
Sadly, Estrella’s fear is not unfounded, as other characters’ bodies do noticeably deteriorate under the intense physical strain of their labor. In fact, Alejo faces the most extreme realization of Estrella’s fear when his health is all but destroyed after he is sprayed with pesticides in the peach orchard—an incident that effectively erases his sense of individuality. As his body begins shutting down and he drifts into unconsciousness, he imagines himself sinking into a tar pit: “He thought first of his feet sinking, sinking to his knee joints…black bubbles erasing him . . . Thousands of bones, the bleached white marrow of bones . . . No fingerprint or history, bone . . . No story or family, bone” (78). Like Estrella, Alejo also identifies with an object of utility in this moment: oil, a slurry of dead plants and animals that humans harness for energy. He feels black bubbles erasing him, leaving only bone, because the nature of his work does not leave space for one’s personhood. As a victim of a “tar pit,” he sees himself as fuel for an impersonal industry that will no doubt continue to profit off of his and others’ labor long after they are gone. This symbolic “dismemberment” of Alejo is Estrella’s worst nightmare, and it is the future she envisions for herself when she pictures the demolition of the once productive barn.
Estrella has a special relationship with the barn—a relationship that is unexpectedly rooted in kinship. When her family first arrives at their new home, Estrella explores the surrounding property with her siblings and curiously peeks her head inside the vacant structure. When she first looks upon the barn, she sees it as a “cathedral,” the religious overtones of which foreshadow the deep, spiritual bond that she develops with this unassuming building—a building which goes on to form the backdrop of many of Estrella’s formative moments throughout the text. One such example occurs immediately after her first romantic encounter with Alejo. Estrella thinks back to her childhood friend Maxine, but, realizing that this friend is gone, she quickly turns her thoughts to the barn, to which she runs “as fast as her clumsy boots allowed” (89). In this scene, the barn acts as a surrogate friend of sorts; Estrella runs to it in much the same way one would run to confide in a dear friend after reaching a significant pubescent milestone.
In addition to her friendly connection with the barn, Estrella is also connected to the barn through a common temporality. The first time Estrella sees the inside of the barn, she notes that the primary fixture is a long chain that hangs from the ceiling, swaying “like a pendulum, as if someone had just touched it and ran off” (10). Swinging pendulums are commonly associated with ticking clocks and, by extension, the passage of time. Estrella sees this swinging chain at two distinct moments, and both instances underscore major changes she faces as she crosses the threshold from childhood to adolescence. The first such instance occurs when she moves to the bungalow with her family. A change like this would be a significant disruption in any young person’s life, and it is a change for which other individuals—a child’s parents—are ultimately responsible. It is at this point that Estrella imagines that someone else has put the chain in motion, “[touching] it and [running] off.” The idea that an invisible person is moving this chain parallels her experience at the beginning of the novel; as a child, her life is primarily governed by the decisions of her parents, and, as a daughter of migrant workers, she is also at the mercy of a capitalist system that condemns piscadore families to poverty and strife. In other words, the metronomic pace of her life has largely been set by external forces, just as the chain’s pace has been set by some unseen kinetic energy.
However, Estrella’s second encounter with the chain is remarkably different. Following her intimate moment with Alejo, she runs full-speed to the barn and forcefully yanks the suspended chain, causing it to swing as it did the first time she laid eyes on it (90). This feat can thus be read as an act of defiance: Estrella seizes control of the chain, just as she seizes control of her burgeoning sexuality. This powerful assertion of agency marks her shift from passively abiding by others’ “time,” to actively empowering herself to define womanhood on her own terms as she comes of age within the text. The finality of this change is emphasized by the noticeable difference in her hands after she pulls the chain: “Once filled with light, her palms were now tainted with brick red rust” (90). The lightness of her palms prior to touching the chain parallels the inexperience and passivity of her childhood, and, once she takes control of the chain, her hands become “tainted,” evoking the voluntary surrender of her youthful innocence in exchange for agency.
As the novel progresses, the barn becomes much more than a temporal mirror for Estrella: it becomes a site of pilgrimage. Following her final goodbye with Alejo at the hospital, Estrella contemplates the utility of the resources upon which she relies for comfort: “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 and Perfecto, and at this moment all of this seemed as weightless against the massive darkness, as the head she held” (169). Estrella realizes that, in this unforgiving landscape, the few sources of peace and security in her life—even her legal documentation and faith in religion—cannot protect her from a predatory, capitalist system that devalues the lives of piscadores, just as an arbitrary line in the sand cannot protect her family from scorpions. Shortly thereafter, acting on pure instinct, she runs to the barn, climbs the chain, and finally stands atop the roof, where she is “stunned by the diamonds,” and notes that the “sparkle of stars cut the night—almost violently sharp . . . like silver pomegranates [glimmering] before an infinity of darkness” (175). The literal darkness of night in this scene echoes the figurative darkness that Viramontes cites earlier in the text, when Estrella laments her lack of protection from life’s dangers.
Although Viramontes uses violent language to describe the stars’ effect on the night, the resulting image is ultimately one of hope and salvation; Estrella’s position on top of the barn enables her to see these stars and open her mind to the possibility that there could be other beacons of light capable of staving off darkness—and that she could be one of them. The final lines of the novel read: “Estrella remained 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). At this moment, Estrella accepts that she cannot expect to find security in other people and things; lines in the earth, faith in Jesucristo, and even a man reliable enough to be called “Perfecto” cannot ensure her salvation. Instead, she stands on top of the barn as a beacon of light, resolute in her belief that she can act as a source of comfort and stability—not only for herself, but for the benefit of all people who seek hope in the darkness.
Throughout Under the Feet of Jesus, Viramontes presents this barn as an extension of Estrella’s body, mind, and spirit; Estrella sees her fear of deterioration, desires for companionship and agency, and hopes for the future all reflected in its feeble architecture. Ultimately, Estrella’s relationship with the barn mirrors her evolving relationship with her inner strength and independence—she initially refuses to participate in its destruction because sees the barn as a reflection of her own helplessness, and then, as her romance blossoms and she begins to assert her agency, she seizes control of the barn by grabbing its chain. At the end of the novel, despite her vulnerability and growth, Estrella realizes that the harsh conditions of piscadore life deprive her of agency in virtually all other respects—a realization namely brought on by the difficulty her family faces when they try to help the sick Alejo. She alone cannot conquer poverty, sickness, and systemic inequity. Instead, she conquers the barn. The barn in the final scene represents the numerous, seemingly insurmountable obstacles she has faced, and will likely continue to face. Therefore, her position atop the barn denotes her triumph; she has conquered the unconquerable, if only for a moment. This victory is a source of much-needed hope and inspiration for Estrella. As she gazes up at the stars whose light seems to pierce the impossible darkness of a night sky, she mourns that which she cannot change, and resolves to be the hope that she and all other lost souls need.
Works Cited
Viramontes, H. M. (1996). Under the Feet of Jesus. New York, NY: Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Interpretations: Journal of the Graduate Literature Association 