Separation between the Pickers and the Capitalists

The passage on page 158 of The Plum Plum Pickers demonstrates how Manuel begins to question his own identity as a picker. He question what he is not, rather than what he is to show how difficult it is to narrow down what it means to be a picker. He finally comes to the decision that he is “a box. That’s it. A box. And another. And another box. And a box. A man. A man. Is. A man is a boxer. A bb box filler” (158). This contrast greatly with how Mrs. Turner identifies herself as the wife of a capitalist. She is able to be a wealthy individual without ever having to work a day in her life or contribute to the cycle of picking. Manuel comes to the realization of how unfair this truly is. “A picker earns two dollars for two thousand cots worth forty dollars on the market shelf. Uncanny. Uncanned. Count count count. J. Somebody sure making something. Not the picker. Two dollars for the picker – and thirty-eight dollars for somebody else” (158). He is baffled by the horrible process, because in his eyes, the picker is the most important part of the process. More important than the planters, the truckers, the grocers and the advertisers. The pickers are the ones doing all of the hard work, and yet they are spending the majority of their money buying back the very food that they picked. This cyclical process keeps the pickers submissive to the wealthy capitalists because they are unable to escape the process and rise above to something better. In the end, Manuel and the other pickers are giving the money to supplement their own wages and are never able to more forward economically.