The American Dream

Richard Andersson

In T. Coraghessan Boyles´s The Tortilla Curtain the lives of two people, an illegal Mexican immigrant and a well-off white American from an exclusive community in Los Angeles, are interlocked. It starts when a white American, Delaney Mossbacher, is out driving in the canyon and all of a sudden an illegal immigrant, Cándido Rincón, appears on the road. Delaney does not have time to react and Cándido get hit. From there on we get to know the story of Delaney, Cándido, and their families and friends. The “liberal humanist” Delaney and his wife Kyra, a career woman who never seems to be satisfied with what she have, and focus a lot on material things like a bigger house, even though they already live in a nice house (3). Then there is the “unfortunate” Cándido and his 17 year old wife América; an innocent girl who follows her nearly twice as old husband to America in order to live out the American dream that she have heard so much about, mainly from Cán...