46 pages • 1 hour read
John FanteAsk The Dust
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Camilla’s Huaraches
Camilla’s huaraches become a symbol of her ethnic and racial identity as a Mexican American. Huaraches are a type of leather sandal thought to have originated among the indigenous peoples of North and South America prior to European colonization of the continents. Camilla’s huaraches highlight her Mexican heritage and connect to Arturo’s tendency to imagine her as a “Mayan princess,” since the Mayans inhabited Central America before the Spanish Conquest. Arturo fixates on Camilla’s shoes because he is both attracted to and disgusted by her ethnicity. He often mocks her shoes when he is mocking her for her Mexican ancestry. This kind of behavior allows him to feel superior to her; however, it stems from the fact that he is deeply insecure about his own racial identity since he has also been mocked and faced prejudice for being an immigrant and looking like an outsider.
Camilla becomes ashamed and defensive after Arturo repeatedly mocks her huaraches. Eventually, she starts to wear white high heels at work, even though they hurt her feet. Although she is much more comfortable in her own shoes, she tries to assimilate and conform to (white) American styles by wearing the white heels. Her anxiety about her shoes connects to her greater anxiety about belonging in American society.
The City of Los Angeles
Ask the Dust is well-known for its descriptions of Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Fante captures the gritty atmosphere of the poorer parts of the city like Bunker Hill particularly vividly. For instance, in Chapter 6, Arturo describes how he walks “past the soot-covered frame buildings along that dark street, sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet” (45). Despite such dark descriptions of the urban landscape, at the beginning of the novel Arturo sees Los Angeles as a space of possibility, the place in which he will become a great writer and have his first great love affair. In time, however, he becomes disillusioned with Los Angeles. His disillusionment with the city leads him to see the solution to his problems as leaving Los Angeles for Laguna Beach, where he imagines settling in the perfect American house with Camilla and escaping the filth and chaos of the city.
Arturo’s relationship with Los Angeles is also connected to his relationship with Camilla. Arturo associates Camilla with the Californian desert landscape before it was colonized and built up and sees her as trapped and corrupted by the urban atmosphere. He also often addresses the city as if it were a woman with whom he is in love. Like his love for Camilla, moreover, Arturo’s love for Los Angeles does not lead to happiness but only further suffering and disenchantment.
Milk
Throughout Ask the Dust, milk recurs as a symbol of comfort and nourishment and connotes a sense of home. At the beginning of the novel, Arturo longs for milk, one of the many comforts that he lost when he left home and began a financially unstable life as a writer in Los Angeles. When Hellfrick suggests that he steal milk from the milk truck, Arturo initially finds the plan despicable; he wants milk so badly, however, that he eventually decides to go along with the plan and steal. He is deeply disappointed when he tastes the stolen milk and discovers that it is buttermilk.
Vera gives Arturo a glass of milk when he visits her in Long Beach; the milk is lukewarm and slightly spoiled and points to the impoverished and slightly sordid conditions in which Vera lives. Near the end of the novel, when Camilla escapes from the asylum, Arturo sees that she is fragile and malnourished and feels as if she needs to rest and “drink a lot of milk” (156). After acquiring the dog, Arturo and Camilla buy a bottle to feed it milk, which underlines the way in which Willie becomes their surrogate child in Arturo’s fantasies of them as a family in the house at Laguna Beach. By feeding the dog milk, Camilla nurses and cares for it the way she might care for a child. This act of giving milk to Willie temporarily gives Camilla a sense of purpose and something to love that loves her unconditionally in return. Milk is also the only sustenance that Camilla carries with her when she wanders out into the desert since, she is carrying the bottle of milk for Willie. In the end, milk is not enough to sustain her.
