The Devil’s Highway: Circa 1850
What is the significance of the title of the novel? The narrator tells us the first eyewitness account of the location can be traced back to 1850 when it was described in rich metaphorical language as:
“a vast graveyard of unknown dead…the scattered bones of human beings slowly turning to dust…the dead were left where they were to be sepulchered by the fearful sand storms that sweep at times over the desolate waste.”
The Smuggler
At the center of the story is Jesús Lopez Ramos, a smuggler better known by his nickname “Mendez.” He will eventually plead guilty to twenty-five counts of smuggling in order to escape the death penalty. Some call Mendez a different kind of smuggler, but to those charged with enforcing border security:
“Mendez walked like a duck and quacked like a duck.”
The Silence of Sound
Metaphor gives shape to the strange, otherworldly aural quality of the Sonoran Desert in the morning through the comparison of simile:
“It was not as if the sounds of the world had been swallowed by the desert—it was as if the sounds of the world had somehow failed to enter the land.”
Chicken Smuggling
To those not in the know, immigrant smugglers are called “coyotes.” In the world of smuggling, however, they are actually called “polleros.” Coyote definitely sounds cooler; especially if you are the immigrant being smuggled since:
“A pollero would be a chicken-wrangler. The level of esteem the smugglers hold for their charges is stated plainly. They’re simply chickens.”
The Greatest Enemy
The greatest threat to immigrants trying to get across the Devil’s Highway is heat. A long passage delineates the six stages of hyperthermia. The metaphor becomes palpable by the last stage when the heat becomes so heavy that”
“The sunlight weighed a thousand pounds.”
