Week 4 Analysis: Close Reading of The Life of Joaquin Murieta

Joaquin Murieta's hope about the American Dream has been destroyed by the American people he so respected and adored.

In the beginning of the story the war between Mexico and America for California had ceased, and America won California. Joaquin was disgusted by his own countrymen for he had idolized the Americans. He moved to California, and got a job in mining. Until he saw the Americans for what they really were: lawless, abusive, greedy, and in the end, Joaquin became one of them, not because he was influenced by them, but because they have deprived him of what is his: freedom.

"They left him, but the soul of the young man was from that moment darkened (Hicks et.al. 165)." This description of Joaquin after his job was taken and his girlfriend was molested  is relevant to every Person of Color who had been cheated by this society, and the biased, tourist approach (stereotypical way of thinking about someone else’s surface culture) of the Americans toward the foreigners who emigrate or seek refuge here. As someone who has only been here for three years and a half, I share the same feeling as Joaquin. I lived in a middle class family in my country, and I had such big hopes coming here because of the American Dream way of thinking. It was disappointing that you left something so great and settled with something so little. Yet, just like Joaquin, we still search for the goodness of what lies in our future, and try not to avoid or ignore our past, but learn and flourish from it.

"His sky seemed clear and his prospects bright, but Fate was weaving her mysterious web around him, and fitting him to be by the forced of circumstances what nature never intended to make him (Hicks et.al. 166)." This passage piqued my interest because Ridge wrote it as if Joaquin was incapable of doing anything on his own free will, and that his happiness will always result to tragedy. It seems like Fate acts like the Americans who always have something against Joaquin, because they hated his nature--which is Joaquin’s blissful freedom. I think that Joaquin knew that he will always be robbed of his freedom, that is why he started to think like those people who takes away what’s his by seeking revenge. But in the end, he gathered people who experienced the same situations he had, formed an alliance, and became a hero for himself and his companions.

Work Cited:

Hicks, Jack et al.  “From The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta the Celebrated California Bandit” The Literature of California, vol. 1, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 163-170.