The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea Book Analysis

As a hardworking and stressed junior in high school, I have several hopes and dreams I wish to achieve and exert effort towards. I desire to get into an adequate college, pass all my courses with good markings, the virtual list in my mind could go on and on. To me, my dreams seem difficult, unclear of what the future holds for me, but the physical difficulties of others can be manifested into something even more jarring. Have you ever had a dream where you were seriously lost, maybe even in a piping hot desert? Well, this dream turned nightmare wasn’t a phantasm for the 26 walkers from Mexico seeking a better life in America, it was the harsh reality. In the captivating novel, The Devil’s Highway, written by Luis Alberto Urrea, a true story of the Devil’s Highway and the walkers that underwent it is presented, emphasizing a key argument that demands to be pursued. As Urrea moves along in the story, telling it through contrasting lenses such as the border patrol agents, and shifting it toward sympathizing with the walkers the most by far, he highlights detailing to imply a need for a change in the U.S. border policy. Through these heavy perspectives, such themes as hope and death are revealed, uncovering an overall purpose for a humane view of the walkers, allowing readers to mourn and pity their unfortunate fates.

Through the two main perspectives portrayed in the story, Urrea emphasizes that his heart is with the walkers more than anyone else. He not only compares and contrasts the distinctive differences between the border patrol and the walkers throughout the book but also highlights these connections to form feelings of sympathy for one group more than the other. Urrea examines the border patrol agents, expressing them as just as wary of even traveling on the Devil’s Highway as the majority of the walkers are aware of its harsh and unforgivable dangers. "If it was the Border Patrol’s job to apprehend lawbreakers, it was equally their duty to save the lost and the dying” (Urrea, 18). The border patrol essentially plays the role of the “antagonist” in the eyes of the Mexicans. They view these authoritarian agents as their enemies, shielding them from a better life, and a sense of security (add more here..). Shifting perspectives, Urrea investigates the walkers and their severe struggles, giving background information about their life in Mexico and why they desired to walk, achieving his main goal of compassion towards them by the audience. “Rural Mexicans don't have the spare money to drown their food in melted cheese. They don't smother their food in mounds of sour cream. Who would pay for it? They have never seen “nachos…” They were aliens before they ever crossed the line” (40). Through the application of spotlighting the nonconformity of the Mexicans (walkers) in comparison to the Americans (border patrol), it is revealed just how unfamiliar and unknown the walker’s indefinite surroundings were to all of them. By labeling the walkers as “aliens,” it not only represents that they are from a foreign country, but that they are literal “aliens” in the sense that it feels as if they’ve arrived on a new planet, unaware of their unpredictable and strange-looking surroundings. 

Through emphasizing heavy detailing related to the walker's hardships, Urrea sparks a feeling of intense mourning and pity dedicated to them. The author’s narrative is introduced with several alarming and petrifying descriptions, enabling anyone to undergo genuine compassionate emotions towards the suffering walkers. In one example, Urrea specifies, “The deads’ open mouths reveal gums that have turned to some substance that looks like baked adobe, crumbling and almost orange. They look like roadside attractions, like wax-and-paper torsos in a gas station Dungeon of Terror” (35). Urrea emphasizes elaborate words and details such as baked and crumbling, to not only produce a sense of the overwhelming feeling of loss for someone we don’t even know but to stress how damaging the heat of the desert affected the traveling walkers who continued to endure such hardships. Urrea can make a descriptive and direct comparison between how immigrants' dead bodies appear in contrast to natural objects in everyday life, creating a floating feeling of doom and inauspiciousness. The illustrations Urrea crafts through his distressful and nerve-boosting accounts of the walkers are often so conspicuous and vivid that even the audience can feel the demand to question if, maybe, they were a walker in their past life. “By Monday we were all dead. I was hiding under that tree. Out there, I saw people in despair. I saw them without water. I don’t know why I survived” (168). Urrea unwraps the intense state of panic and dehumanization the remaining walkers were falling deeper and deeper into every minute. By applying vastly short sentences to describe the traumatizing event, he ominously hints a tone of tiredness and pain from the twelve surviving walkers, who witnessed the group's casualties. By saying “I don’t know why I survived,” it is considerably expressed that the majority of the lingering walkers had given up on surviving and were quite literally praying for their death, begging to escape the torture that the desert heat had forced them to endure for far too long. 

Overall, such themes as hope and death are revealed, uncovering a general purpose for a humane seeming book through Urrea’s compassion conveyed towards the walkers. As the story shifts with contrasting perspectives such as the border patrol agents and the persevering walkers, it is clear that Urrea sympathizes with the walkers the most, as he, himself, is from Mexico. He undergoes the use of heavy detailing and harsh descriptions to strongly establish his point that he is “with” the walkers. (add more to body paragraphs in class through peer editing so that a clear and accurate conclusion can be made).