Moths and Spiders, Lizards and Beetles

At first I was thrown by the jumping narrative of the novel; every section introduced a new character and a new setting with little hope of ever bringing them all together. The more I read, however, the more i was reminded of the opening scene, where every morning Rafael goes through a ritual of sweeping out all the animals that have, as if by magic, snuck their way into the house overnight. The wash of ethnicity  cultural backgrounds, and languages in the novel seems to me very similar to this opening scene. All the characters, seemingly unconnected, find themselves linked by some cosmic force beyond their own understanding much the same as the animals find themselves bound by the broom. Manzanar seems to have been able to tap into this connectivity in a way that no other character yet has. Rafael feels it for a moment when she finds the "line" and Gabriel hints at it when he "feels" the sun from the solstice despite being in LA at the time, but Manzanar for all his craziness is able to understand the human link that is lost on the other characters. In many ways this seems to emanate from his relationship to nature or rather his distance from technology. He seems to have gained his power/understanding when he gave up the rat race and became a street musician. Even this resonates with the first scene, where we see technology ie. the vacuum cleaner not only fail, but ultimately inflicting harm (on the crab), as opposed to the broom which seems instead to facilitate the natural order of things.