39 pages • 1 hour read
Héctor TobarThe Tattooed Soldier
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: "Antonio and Guillermo"
Chapter 17 Summary: "Adventure in Beverly Hills"
After the move to the tunnels, José Juan disappears. He leaves for work one day and does not return. Anything is possible regarding his disappearance: He could be dead, or he could just as well have returned to Mexico or found a steady job.
Later, José Juan returns. It turns out that he found a couple of jobs by waiting among the day laborers. While the first was not rewarding, the second was a good job doing yard work. The Mexican housekeeper takes a liking to him and allows him to stay at the house. She helps him find a better job at a garment factory; moreover, her brother has a house where José Juan and Antonio can stay for a very low price. This is great news, although Antonio is still distracted by his mission. The friends puzzle over the fact that both the Mexican woman and José Juan have families and yet are moving in together, but José Juan merely shrugs.
Meanwhile, Frank manages to find a gun for Antonio. It is small, a .22 caliber, but it only costs $20. Antonio pays with money given to him by José Juan. Frank’s plan is for Antonio to wait in the alley where Longoria dumps his trash and to shoot him there.
Chapter 18 Summary: "Halloween"
Frank takes Antonio deep into the tunnel in order to gain some experience with the gun. After a few shots at bottles, he realizes that the best bet is simply to walk right up to Longoria and shoot him as if the gun was a knife.
At El Pulgarcito Express, the owner and some workers see the not guilty verdict in the Rodney King case. Duarte is glad to see the verdict. Later everyone leaves except for Longoria and one of the workers, Yanira. Longoria returns to the television set, and watches as chaos unfolds in South Central. He feels foolish for not having his weapon, and he feels the need to find Reginalda. He goes to her house, but does not find her. He encounters a roommate, who is rude to him. When he returns to work he calls her, and the fact that she is not home convinces him that she is with someone else. He feels enraged at the perceived betrayal.
At the tunnel encampment, the Mayor arrives and explains the verdict to the inhabitants. He urges them to go to Parker Center, where he has heard demonstrators are gathering. The camp’s inhabitants venture out into the scene of chaos, and later they drift back with stories of their adventures.
The next day, José Juan comes to get Antonio. They take the bus toward South Central, but the route terminates before that destination because of the ongoing riots. As they walk, they begin to see police cars and fires. They see people looting stores, with almost gleeful looks on their faces. Overtaken by the possibilities of the day, José Juan heads off to find “el Armenio,” a man who owes him money but has refused to pay. Continuing onward, Antonio sees a young boy carrying a load of looted candy.
Chapter 19 Summary: "Below Crown Hill"
At El Pulgarcito Express, Longoria hears a burglar alarm from a nearby building. This signals that a mob is approaching. He feels that shuttering the stores has made them more prone to attack, and he hopes to stand his ground. When someone smashes the windows, however, he and Yanira escape.
Antonio arrives shortly thereafter and tries to decide where to find Longoria. An old woman is leading the destruction of El Pulgarcito Express. He notices that he has seen the police only once, running around on Venice Boulevard trying to ward off looters who simply ran to other stores.
Longoria, meanwhile, has proceeded to Reginalda’s building. He sees looters bringing items into a nearby building and discovers that Reginalda’s apartment is full of stolen items. This enrages him, and when he encounters her, he criticizes her harshly. When she defends herself, he leaves, smashing a window as he exits. He sees looters in a drugstore, oblivious to the fact that the drugstore is on the verge of collapsing due to a fire in the neighboring building.
Antonio, meanwhile, is living a fantasy of shooting Longoria in the presence of a crowd. To his astonishment, he encounters Longoria. Antonio does not hesitate: He shouts at Longoria and shoots him. He shoots twice, imagining vengeance for his wife, his son, and the people in the photographs.
Despite the bullet wounds, Longoria manages to pursue his attacker for nearly a mile before collapsing. At that point, Antonio grabs him and drags him into the tunnel to conceal him. Making his way back through the chaos, Antonio imagines that Elena would be proud to see the people of LA rise up in anger.
Chapters 17-19 Analysis
These last chapters see the story’s final act unfold amid the Los Angeles riots that began on April 29, 1992. Running for several days, the riots cost more than 50 lives and millions of dollars of destroyed public and private property. The riots are not portrayed as inherently evil in the novel. In part, they are an outburst of frustration from the poor and homeless against long-lasting injustice. In history, the riots were largely motivated by black anger; the acquittal of the officers videotaped beating Rodney King seemed like a direct affront to a black community that had long endured mistreatment from the police.
In the novel, most of the homeless or poor characters sympathize with the riots; Longoria is the only one disgusted by what is going on. This is consistent with the contempt and lack of empathy he felt for peasants and poor villagers in Guatemala. While the sequence of events leading to Antonio’s act of revenge seems improbable, it illustrates how people take advantage of moments of disorder to fulfill personal vendettas. Moreover, Antonio’s revenge is a moment of symbolic catharsis for those who have experienced similar trauma, whether the loss of family, the loss of home, or the loss of dignity that often accompanies impoverishment.
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