The irony of marriage
Marriage was not what Chino thought it was. What originally felt like divine bliss and destiny now feels like a confusing burden and a challenge to his faith. How is he supposed to go to college and escape the barrio now? Instead, he has to figure out a way to support his family in this same environment which his whole life has taught him can be very capricious and dangerous. Eventually, the crisis leads him to seasons of deconstruction. Instead of finding responsibility quickly, he finds it eventually, after much fallout has occurred.
The chaos of loyalty
Loyalty seems orderly because it affixes a person to another person or to a principle of some sort. But actually, that attachment has the potential to be extremely chaotic, because an attempt to be loyal is an attempt to follow through on something when ordinarily it might be given up. That means that there is a wider spectrum of what a person will do or endure in the name of loyalty. Chino is on a journey to discover what loyalty is, but he knows through his social reputation that he demonstrates a personality which is loyal by nature. However, he betrays certain people and conserves loyalty in other places. His loyalty is especially chaotic.
Drama and community
The plot's relationship to community is certainly part of the book's intention. Namely, the plot shows the dramatic irony of life in community. One never really knows what anyone else is up to, but everyone has to sustain lengthy stretches of time in the same space. So on one level, community is a kind of order, but on another level community automatically involves a certain amount of risk because chaotic and violent people are also part of the community. The criminal element is often the major subject material for social drama like this.
Bodega's downfall
Bodega is considered by Sapo as a dynamic character and a person with many connections, so it is ironic that the Bodega story ends in such a chaotic death. It is a death over the femme fatale, a death between friends where the wife of one is leaving to be with the other, like Helen of Troy. Bodega's downfall isolates an important risk within his chaotic and dynamic character which is always a threat in personalities that have a tendency toward extreme action—his untimely death.
The loyal traitor
When Chino decides to do the right thing by his loyalty to Sapo, he demonstrates an ethical principle that he is in the middle of betraying. The novel is set in East Harlem. In that setting, to rat to the authorities is a serious violation of cultural norms. While Chino continues his loyalty toward one individual, he fails to remember what loyalty might have meant in other situations. At home, he is defined by this quality, because he says he is trying to make a better home life for his wife and child, but instead, he just does whatever he wants to do and pretends it is for his wife's benefit that she not know.
