T. C. Boyle's TORTILLA CURTAIN

The character of Delaney, in T. Coraghessan Boyle's novel Tortilla Curtain, is a stereotypical racist intolerant of the differences between himself and the Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who interfere with his wealthy, yuppie lifestyle in Southern California. They interfere, first, by simply existing, because their existence, to Delaney, brings with it many undesirable qualities and habits:

There wasn't a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains that didn't have its crushed beer cans, its carpet of glass, its candy wrappers and cigarette butts, and it was people like this Mexican or whatever he was who were responsible, thoughtless people, stupid people, people who wanted to turn the whole world into a garbage dump, a little Tijuana . . . (Boyle 11).

In other words, he is not even certain that the man is a Mexican, but he hates Mexicans so much and is so intolerant of them that he automatically puts the man into the category of those hates.

Although Delaney does have moments where he tries in his imagination to sense what it would be like to be a poor Mexican living in Southern California, those moments do not go deep and do not last long. He leaves no doubt that

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Category: Literature - T