Blood Orange

Throughout Yamashita’s novel, Tropic of Orange, the character of Arcangel has been a one that is a connecting force in the novel. Fighting against his nemesis, SUPERNAFTA, Arcangel represents a view of globalization and progression that contrasts with the Western view, such that he is a colonizer OF North America, FROM South America. This is made especially obvious in that he says his name is Cristobal Colón, a Latin-Americanized Christopher Columbus, and he describes himself to the custom officials as, “Post-Columbian” (199), making this an obvious comparison. In addition to this equivalence, Arcangel represents the educated immigrant, the poet, one that speaks half in poetry and half in prose. His poetry is especially interesting because it exposes grand scale, broad, often extremely serious and austere issues that are taking place in the world, but in a manner that is eye-catching to the reader and more appealing than just spelling-it-out-for-everyone.

The scene in which he interacts with the custom officials is the most striking interaction of poetry and prose, and one that contains many themes of the novel: globalization, Westernization, ethnocentrism, forced white normativity, and progression. Arcangel, even after talking to the men about his education at Harvard which proves he is an learned person, the instant that he slips into Spanish as he is moving across the border, “slipping across as if from one dimension to another” (199), he is accosted with the words, “SPEAK ENGLISH NOW!” (199), showing the North American double standard when it comes to immigration and globalization. American’s desire the multicultural aspect of globalization, but only if that means their culture can still reign supreme. It is imperative for invaders, “The cockroach. The cockroach. The cockroach” (199), to know that their culture and their customs are not allowed to overshadow those of Americans. Especially in Arcangel's case, his education makes him even more of a threat, because education makes it much harder to get someone to blindly follow the rules of others. Additionally, he carries the orange, which symbolizes expansion and the movement of the Tropic of Cancer into North America. As Arcangel’s poem which immediately follows this scene describes, Americans dehumanize immigrants, making them into vermin, animals, and inanimate objects, “the cockroack…washing machines…vacuums…garbage disposals…aliens” (199-201); this dehumanization gives Americans the justification and reasoning to oppress and ignore the customs, traditions and rich history behind the cultures that are entering their country.