Prison and fate
The first imagery of the novel is the one that frames the narrative from start to finish. The imagery of prison represents a loss of autonomy that suggests fate, and the question of innocence is a natural response to this imagery. The prison imagery asks the reader to consider for their own self whether the system that the jail represents, namely the legal systemic, is just or whether there are systemic injustices that have to be addressed.
Poverty and dysfunction
For young Pascual, what did life have to offer? His family was chronically separated from opportunity, and his father would have been desperately poor if not for his connections to a criminal underground, an anti-system through which he can gain power doing what others are afraid to do because of the law. Obviously, this represents a serious dysfunction in the home, because if he can break the law so blatantly, why wouldn't he abuse his family? He is an anti-patriarch. Instead of representing order and stability, the father resents order and plagues his family with chaos, anger, and abuse.
Disenfranchisement and patriarchy
The patriarchy is clearly on display in Rosario and Lola's stories. They are left to fend for themselves in a world that doesn't allow them to make something of their life, nor does it show them through example or program how they would even do that. Rosario finally leaves after the chronic and severe abuse in her home leaves her too frantic and damaged to survive there any longer, and if leaving the family means becoming a prostitute, then so be it, she says. The prostitution subplot exposes the lack of options; her options are either to work the streets or to sustain even more damage at home.
Suffering and misunderstanding
The story shows that suffering is not an equal problem. Those with less money suffer more, clearly. Also, the systemic injustice leaves the children in this family up against the world. Life is already hard enough, but with parents who fill a child with hatred and abuse, life is a nightmarish hellscape. They struggle, and all three kids end up in tragic straights. The daughter ends up as an abused prostitute, the first son ends up in prison, and the youngest son dies in a vat of hot oil. The prisoner feels his fate has been misunderstood and seeks to explain that his criminal history is rooted in injustice and felt suffering, not in his own evil.
