Essential Meaning: It is pointless to put oneself above anyone else because of race, ethnicity, etc, because everyone dies the same.
Quote: “In the desert, we are all illegal aliens. […] However long it takes you to die, you will pass through six known stages of heat death, or hyperthermia, and they are the same for everyone. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, or what color your skin”(Urrea 120).
Explanation: Nature does not care about the color of someone’s skin. Desolation has no consideration for wealth, or gender, or ethnicity. Heat will kill all, and heat will kill equally. Urrea describes, in depth, how a human dies of heat. He uses second person pronouns so that the reader may imagine themselves dying. One can more easily imagine their own thirst, their own delirium, than that of an illegal immigrant, and Urrea uses that to his advantage to get his point across. He points out that the stages of heat death “are the same for everyone,” and then proceeds to describe the dying process in a way that forces the reader to self-reflect. In this way, Urrea makes it clear that death does not discriminate, and makes the reader wonder why, then, do people discriminate in life? If people succumb to heat in the same way, if people die no matter their age or race or socioeconomic standing, then what do any of those traits matter? It is truly foolish to discriminate based on certain traits because at the end of it all, no one is invincible. Everyone is human: everyone lives human, and everyone dies human. Urrea is forcefully telling the reader that Death has no time to consider skin color or language, or any other trait. Urrea is also quietly telling the reader that if Death has no consideration of skin or language, then why should anyone else? Ultimately, none of those traits matter, and at the core, everyone is simply, mortally, human.
The Tortilla Curtain and The Devil's Highway 