The Devil's Road By Luis Alberto Urrea

Improved Essays
In Luis Alberto Urrea’s novel, “The Devil’s highway,” he uses a passage that describes the migrants’ digression towards death as they travel across the Yuma desert to create an uncomfortable, and sympathetic feeling from the audience. Throughout the book, Urrea uses imagery to describe the harsh conditions of the desert, and the high risk that comes along with attempting to cross it. The passage goes into detail about the unavoidable stages of hyperthermia and how each of these effects the body. Urrea intends to create more emotions within the reader and to help them fully connect with the tone throughout the book. Through imagery he not only describes to the reader what these people may have gone through while making their passage across the …show more content…
As he describes the stages that the body goes through while suffering in the desert, he adds insight as to what may be going through their head as the hyperthermia progresses and how they may be feeling in a certain situation. By using this technique Urrea again attempts to bring the reader to a more personal level while reading the text. While describing heat syncope he not only explains the symptoms that go with this stage of heat death, he adds excerpts of thoughts a sufferer may be having such as: “Where’s the water?” and “Follow the leader” (123). Using these phrases humanizes the medical description Urrea gives of the process, making the reader more emotionally involved. He also describes actions that someone may go through, such as how they might “lick [their] cracking lips” and fight that their “tongue is dry and sticky,” which uses imagery to give the reader the sense that they are watching this person go through the motions (123). The reader is intended to feel connected to the story Urrea is trying to portray, but distant enough so that they feel helpless when it comes to changing what is taking place. The reader looks in on the story from the outside while feeling as if they are close enough to it that they could help. This creates a sense of helplessness within the reader, and therefore also enforces a sympathetic …show more content…
The vivid imagery that Urrea consistently uses throughout the text serves to humanize the events and processes he describes so that the audience feels more connected with the subject. He describes the events in ways that do not necessarily connect to a certain race or ethnicity, and brings in examples of people who have suffered that are not the stereotypical undocumented immigrant trying to cross the border. The author recognizes that many readers will not have established emotional ties with events that are described in this book, so he uses various other literary devices to bring what he writes to a more personal level with his

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