45 pages • 1 hour read
Carlos BulosanAmerica is in the Heart
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Allos
Allos is the narrator of America is in the Heart. His life is loosely based on that of the author, Carlos Bulosan. While still a teenager, Allos moves to America, which he greatly romanticizes in his mind. Once there, he travels incessantly while undergoing constant disappointments. He seems incapable of sitting still. His dreams of becoming a writer make him more ambitious than many of the other Filipinos he meets in America, and his intellect gives him a chance to lead and influence the flurry of strikes and other union activity populating the final third of the book. Above all, Allos is a person who appears to be in a constant state of either self-doubt or complete confidence. When things go well, he is full of passion, but downward trends send him into spirals of worry, fury, and violence. When he is diagnosed with tuberculosis, he is forced to spend more time in his mind. This period of contemplation leads to most of his reflective acts and allows him to escape from his fear of himself.
Allos’s ambivalent attitude toward America comprises one of the book’s major themes. On one hand, Allos rightly bemoans the widely-held racist attitudes among whites toward Filipinos and other ethnic groups. On the other, he acknowledges that America is a place where a poor immigrant like himself can build a career as a writer and activist.
Father
From the outset, Allos’s father is a tragic figure who is nearly crushed beneath the weight of his responsibility. He is willing to work from sunup to sundown but can never manage to get ahead for long. There is little evidence that he ever views his life with joy or comfort. When he succumbs to the illness that will kill him, it almost feels like a relief. For Allos, however, his father’s death sends him into a spiral of depression and alcoholism.
Mother
Allos’s mother plays a similar role to his father in the book, but she is more lighthearted. She nurtures and jokes with Allos, and they bond in several scenes, like when she takes him to the market to help her with her business. She is frequently pregnant but handles her duties and circumstances without complaint. She represents a tendency amongst the underclass in the Philippines to accept their peasant status rather than foster bitterness toward the middle and upper classes.
Amado
Amado is one of Allos’s older brothers. In America, he transforms from being a man who lives mainly for pleasure into a criminal. He also goes from being one of Allos’s childhood idols to an object of pity. He experiences some redemption near the end of the book when he enlists in the armed forces. Amado is the clearest example of the negative effect of America on a Filipino immigrant, as he seeks out criminal activity in the absence of other opportunities.
Macario
When the book begins, Macario is a high school student in another town. He is the family’s primary hope for financial stability. If Macario can graduate, he can return and become a schoolteacher, guaranteeing him the highest salary in town. Macario is often ungrateful and selfish, showing little appreciation to his father for selling the family’s remaining pieces of land just to keep him in school. Later, when he reunites with Allos in America, their relationship is tender and brotherly. They care for each other during their respective illnesses. Macario’s interest in politics stimulates Allos’s activist mind, and Allos’s growing interest in literature makes them perfect sounding boards for one another. By the end of the book, however, Macario is a shell of his former self.
Eileen Odell
Eileen is the sister of the writer Alice Odell. She becomes Allos’s primary confidant for a span of the book. She provides him with a huge variety of novels and visits him nearly every week while he is in the hospital. She is the opposite of many other white women Allos meets in America. She is not racist, she has little interest in sensuality, and she encourages him to think.
