America Is in the Heart Literary Elements

Autobiography

The action takes place over the course of many years in the Philippines and in America.

The action is told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.

The action is told in a neutral tone.

The protagonist is the narrator and the antagonists are represented by the racist people the narrator has to deal with throughout his life.

The major conflict is an internal one and is between the narrator's desire to stand up for himself and the desire to just fit in.

The story reaches its climax when the narrator and his brother move to America.

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When the narrator claims that he will be happy once he will be rich is an understatement because the narrator never does achieve happiness through money. This pushes the narrator to realize that happiness comes from within and nothing exterior will ever make him completely happy.

One of the main allusions we find here is the idea that dealing with racism can be worse than the prospect of dealing with a raging war.

The most important image in the autobiography appears in the middle of the book when the narrator describes a riot in the middle of a city in the Philippines. This image is important because it wat pushes the narrator to want to move to another country.

One of the most paradoxical ideas is presented at the beginning of the story when the narrator claims that even though he lived in complete poverty in the Philippines and even though he was surrounded by violence, he was happy.

A parallel is drawn between the life the narrator experiences in America and in the Philippines. This parallel is used here to point out the difference between the two countries and to highlight the idea that life in the Philippines was extremely difficult.

The term land is used here as a general term to make reference to the idea of love and legacy.

We have a personification in the line "the air was filled with something sweet which lulled us to sleep".