26 pages • 52 minutes read
Pedro PietriPuerto Rican Obituary
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The American Dream
Each of the five characters in “Puerto Rican Obituary” desires a life characterized by financial stability in the mainland U.S. They work hard, “never took a coffee break” (Line 49), and seek to take part in the conspicuous consumption notable among white Americans. They buy used cars, some better than others, and televisions, even though the purchases might have been beyond their means; Miguel “died waiting for the welfare check / to come and go and come again” (Lines 66-67) and the poem contains multiple references to bill collectors. Ultimately, the five realize they cannot achieve this dream without outside intervention, most notably relying on the lottery to save them from “make-believe steak / and bullet-proof rice and beans” (Lines 44-45).
“Dreaming” (Line 101) is repeated numerous times in the poem and the speaker most often associates dreams with acquisitive goals such as living in a “Thirty-thousand-dollar home” (Line 105) in a “Clean-cut lily-white neighborhood” (Line 103). The five seek “to belong to a community” (Line 107), instead of living on “nervous breakdown streets / where the mice live like millionaires / and the people do not live at all” (Lines 59-61). These “Clean-cut” (Line 103) neighborhoods are the equivalent of the nice house with the white picket fence often associated with the American dream.
Pietri identifies the source of his characters’ “empty” dreams (Line 112) as
the after-effects
of television programs
about the ideal
white american family (Lines 115-118).
As much as they try, Pietri implies, they will be unfulfilled, as the American dream belongs only to “gringos who want them lynched” (Line 108).
Assimilation
Even though the Puerto Rican characters in the poem “died never knowing / what the front entrance / of the first national city bank looks like” (Lines 20-22), they attempted to assimilate into white American society. They try so hard to do so that when they die, they “never knew they were Puerto Ricans” (Line 48), so thoroughly did they absorb the American dream discussed above. While they do their best to rise above their meager circumstances and achieve this dream, they realize that the best way to do so is to practice “the art of their dialogue—for broken english lessons” (Lines 212-213). The better their English, the more “American” they will seem. However, the better their English, the less Puerto Rican they will become.
Their attempts at assimilation lead, in death, to equality, as they all become part of “the groovy hereafter” (Line 258). It no longer matters which of them can speak English better or has a nicer used car. But this fact does not make up for what they could have had in life. As mentioned above, the penultimate stanza shifts to the subjunctive tense, expressing what might have been, as they never “turned off the television” (Line 276), nor did they “tune into their imaginations” (Line 277). Instead of maintaining “the only religion of their race” (Line 283), as “latino souls” (Line 282), they try to banish their roots. In the end, though, they return to their authentic selves. Dead, they are
doing their own thing
where beautiful people sing
and dance
and work together
where the wind is a stranger
to miserable weather conditions
where you do not need a dictionary
to communicate with your people (Lines 297-303).
Pietri establishes that it is enough for the five to realize that “negrito / means to be called LOVE” (Lines 314-315). If this understanding is possible, there is little point in going to such effort to assimilate.
Love
The answer to the failures of the American dream and assimilation is love—or, “LOVE,” as it is expressed in all capital letters in the final line of the poem, Line 315. Interestingly, though the poem references family several times, love is never part of that discussion. For instance,
Milagros
died waiting for her ten children
to grow up and work
so she could quit working (Lines 68-71).
Here, family remains a burden until family members can work to relieve economic hardship. Milagros’s children are simply mouths to feed and bodies to shelter, until they are old enough to contribute to the household. Similarly, all five characters die “passing their bill collectors / on to the next of kin” (Lines 30-31). As such, they become financial burdens to those who live on after them.
Love only comes in to play when thinking about the entire Puerto Rican community, in New York City and globally. Just as “PUERTO RICO IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE” (Line 273), it is also the place where “the men and women admire desire / and never get tired of each other” (Lines 341-342). These people never feel burdened by their children or parents, or by each other. They are not pursued by bill collectors or forced to rely on the lottery to get ahead. Instead, they live in a place where “to be called negrito / means to be called LOVE” (Lines 314-315). This love characterized by acceptance and belonging is an impossibility for these five characters in New York City.
