Quality of Life and Significance of Prunes

This post is sort of an extension of the previous post that John wrote. As he described, the quality of life for the pickers is extremely low. They live in small almost uninhabitable shacks and they make very little money. They work hard and have no time or money for luxuries. Right from the beginning of the book Barrio's descriptions of nearly everything in the Compound has a negative connotation. The second paragraph on page 39 is a good example of this as described by Lupe. Because of this description of the quality of life I found it interesting (and not coincidental) that the workers are picking prunes and not plums. Prunes are dried plums, meaning that they lack juice, life, and freshness. They also are black and wrinkled in appearance. I found the description of the workers to parallel the prunes they are picking. The workers are being exploited and similar to prunes they lack life and freshness. Even their culture is being "dried up" which Barrio makes clear by the mix of english and spanish that is often spoken.