Viramontes The Cariboo Cafe

“The Cariboo Café”

Most people that are part of middle-class America probably live relatively comfortable lives. They may have busy schedules and some hardships but are still ensured a roof over their heads, food to eat, water for drinking and other purposes, clothing on their backs, and a feeling of relative security. At the basic level, middle-class Americans have all they need. However, on the other end of the spectrum, Helena María Viramontes depicts the life of people who do not have these luxuries. These are the illegal immigrants, refugees, and poor who live in run-down neighborhoods and are just getting by from day to day. Most middle-class Americans do not have any first-hand experience with the lives that many illegal immigrants …show more content…
Once Viramontes establishes the box with the first perspective, presenting the story in a traditional storytelling form, she is then free to step outside that box and switch the structure up. Without any warning, Viramontes then proceeds with first person point of view and present tense. Readers are then thrown off track, the story seeming to be completely separate from the previous one. Viramontes also presents this perspective so that the café owner is almost telling a story from his point of view, offering his thoughts on situations and events. Here, the readers are able to get inside the owner’s mind, seeing life through his eyes and getting his personal feelings and thoughts. Because the owner owns a cheap cafe in a poverty-stricken area, he comes into contact with the poor and illegal immigrants daily. In the story, the owner says, “to tell you the truth—which is what I always do though it don’t pay—I wouldn’t have nobody walking through that door. The streets are full of scum, but scum gotta eat too is the way I see it” (Viramontes 388). Although the owner talks about his life in a casual and matter-of-fact way, the readers get a sense that he might not be as content with his life as he says. In the quote, he mentions always telling the truth and living among a neighborhood of poor as if he does not care, but he also adds …show more content…
By the time readers reach this perspective, the story is much more personal. Viramontes allows readers to enter a quite intimate space where readers can fully feel the mother’s emotions and thoughts as if she is writing in a private journal, using first person point of view and present tense. The mother describes how she had lost her son and has been searching for him ever since. In the story, the mother states that “It is the night of La Llorona. The women come up from the depths of sorrow to search for their children. I join them, frantic, desperate, and our eyes become scrutinizers, our bodies opiated with the scent of their smiles” (Vasconcelos 390). In this quote, she expresses agony and hopelessness in her desperate and lost search for someone whose location is uncertain and unknown. Readers also get a clear sense of how strong the mother’s love is for her son. The last part of the quote, “bodies opiated with the scent of their smiles,” is a unique way of writing about the senses and how a person can be so infatuated and filled with another’s presence. The smiles are even so prevalent in the women’s minds that they go beyond visual sense and even have a scent. Through the mother’s search for her missing son, readers experience the disorientation that the mother is experiencing. Readers also feel disoriented

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