- Sharmili Lakshmanan
Introduction:
Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes forward, relying on his courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. He attempts the dangerous journey eight times before he succeeds. During his first seven attempts, he is severely beaten, robbed, and humiliated. However, he never gives up. The struggle that Enrique and other immigrant make to reach el norte is harder than anyone can expect.
Discussion:
To travel north, Enrique, like other migrants, rides the tops of freight trains, a most dangerous endeavor. The dangers of the trains are many that include both physical and emotional struggles. Not only are the trains themselves dangerous, but migrants who travel on them must also overcome many difficulties like migrants can get pulled under the wheels while boarding the moving train, which can cause them to death. Others fall off the train while it is in motion. Gangs rule the train tops, robbing, beating, killing, and raping as they please. Both female and male migrants are in continual danger of rape. Migrants suffer from starvation and dehydration, and are unable to go to the bathroom
Enrique’s journey from Honduras to the U.S. unveils the innate loyalty of a loving child to their mother and presents the dangers that a migrant faces on the road with consistent angst; nevertheless, it supports the idea that compassion shown by some strangers can boost the retreating confidence within a person. In Sonia Nazario’s “Enrique’s Journey,” he seeks the beacon of light that all migrants hope to encounter; “El Norte.” Like many children before him, it is the answer to the problems of a hard life. While being hunted down “like animals” leading to “seven futile attempts,” he is
Should everyone have the right to immigrate?There were many human rights issue in my novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. The human rights mentioned by Sonia was the right to pursue economic opportunity , to immigrate , to safe travels , and to a free education . These human rights are still affected people within the United States and other country. Due to these human rights issue we need to take action to the most important human right issue is the right to immigration. There are three sources that explain the right to immigration based on Enrique’s Journey and what people do and feel about this. Enrique’s Journey relates to real-life issues of immigration by explaining the challenges people face. They are determined
In Sonia Nazario’s book, Enrique’s Journey, she presents the issue of migration through the thrilling tale of the journey taken by a Honduran boy, Enrique. Nazario’s central argument focuses on the endless cycle of parents leaving their children, and the children following and the desire for this cycle to stop. She wants the parents to stay in their countries and not break up their families. In order to extensively research the journey Enrique and other child migrants took, Nazario began, “as Enrique did, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Using her extensive interviews with him as her map, she retraces his steps, telling the story as though she had sat beside him on each step of his journey,” (Wildman). These steps fueled Nazario’s argument as she
The hardships one would encounter in their lives have become a part of our society, because they act as stepping stones to build ourselves with trials to reach any higher ground. It’s ready is the best, and worst possible actions we have done to ourselves.
In the novel Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario demonstrates the onerous journey of illegal immigrants. Sonia Nazario aims for the readers to make them understand what most of the immigrants go through during their journey to the United States. By appealing to ethos and pathos throughout the book, Sonia Nazario portrays the path that Enrique undergoes to reunite with his mother.
Sonia Nazario wrote Enrique’s Journey in order to shed light on the social issues involved with immigration. With the knowledge that these issues are a touchy subject, especially with the United States’ current political status, and that many people are quick to disregard any thought of allowing people of non-native descent to enter America, Nazario had to find a means to get her story across without immediately being dismissed. So, to create a novel that ensures not only a person with empathy towards immigrants will mourn with Enrique but also people with an opposing political agenda, Nazario uses ethos through following Enrique on his journey and pathos through an emotional connection to the logos statics she includes.
Sonia Nazario is a highly acclaimed author and journalist, who has made notable contributions in the fields of immigration and social justice. Her literary works, "Enrique's Journey" and "Why the U.S. Needs Immigrants," share common themes, yet differ significantly in their approach. In "Enrique's Journey," Nazario narrates the story of a young Honduran boy embarking on a perilous journey to the United States, while, in "Why the U.S. Needs Immigrants," she presents an editorial that employs factual evidence to assert the value of immigrants to the country. Both works are eloquent testimony to the struggles and contributions of immigrants in America, with "Enrique's Journey" emphasizing the emotional aspects, and "Why the U.S. Needs immigrants"
Each year, thousands of Central American immigrants embark on a dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States. Many of these migrants include young children searching for their mothers who abandoned them. In Enrique’s Journey, former Los Angeles Times reporter, Sonia Nazario, recounts the compelling story of Enrique, a young Honduran boy desperate to reunite with his mother. Thanks to her thorough reporting, Nazario gives readers a vivid and detailed account of the hardships faced by these migrant children.
The movie “El Norte “is the one of the most successful and influential movies to represent the immigrants state. Director Gregory Nava’s gives the story of Guatemalan siblings Rosa and Enrique’s journey in a melodramatic way. The movie is divided to three main parts, Guatemala, Mexico and United States. The story of Rosa and Enrique’s shows us community, the power of language and culture in different countries.
According to President Obama (2014), “If we are serious about economic growth, it is time to heed the call of business leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders, and law enforcement- and fix our broken immigration system. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have acted. I know that members of both parties in the House want to do the same” (President Obama, 2014). The United States of American has long been the safe haven for those who seek to escape poverty, hunger, torture, and oppression in their home countries. According to the film, The Other Side of Immigration (2009), in 1970, the United States housed 750,000 immigrants and as of 2009, there are
I can only imagine what immigrating to america is like for these families, everyday children my age and younger are risking their lives to come to America and It really makes me appreciate how much I have. For Lourdes, Enrique, and Maria Isabel in Enrique’s Journey they must make the hard decision of leaving everything they grew up with in Honduras to come to america for a better life. Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, could no longer afford to feed and send her children to school and was struggling to make money with her job. “Lordes can think of only one place that offers hope… Lourdes has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States, and make money and send it home.” (p.20) Lourdes decides to make the trip because it
I never expected Enrique’s Journey to be such a personal work. Being a journalistic book, I expected a lot of research in it, but not to the level Nazario’s gone to. Definitely, the way she introduced herself into the enduring situations that migrants go through when they try to reach the US gave me a new perspective of what to expect from the book. She comes from a migrant family too, so she can sort of relate to the characters in the book. However, as she confesses herself, her journey was nowhere as arduous as what these children go through to find their mothers. And the way in which she involved herself into the situation increases her empathy for Enrique en other numberless children.
In the novel Enrique’s Journey I feel Enrique is a perpetrator of crime. He unlawfully enters the US in the hope of finding his mother. Yes, it is a heartbreaking story, but that still does not excuse the fact that he broke the law. There are some dangers when attempting to illegally enter the US such as death and diseases. Death is a concern for the person trying to enter the US; they can be killed along the way by countless different ways, such as: Starvation, dehydration, burns, falling off of trains, freezing, and murder. They also can bring diseases into the United States that can kill many. When Unaccompanied Alien Children are apprehended Border Patrol and other guards are forced to watch and care for them. Some children may have diseases and a guard may catch it. Many undocumented people lack basic vaccinations. This is not only affecting the person who is travelling, but others around them too.
They slip into the San Diego rail yard furtively, preferably beneath the protective cover of darkness, jumping fences, eluding guards and dodging two hundred -ton locomotives in a perilous dash for the most elusive of prizes, a free ride to the north. According to Jose Flores, an illegal Mexican immigrant seeking work in the United States says, “To be truthful, I have no idea of precisely where this train goes, other than it takes us to el norte” (Griffin 363+). The fact that each night literally hundreds of men and women clamber over the barricade is testament to its ineffectiveness and to the irresistible pull of United States jobs “that on average pay eight times their equivalent in Mexico” (Griffin 363+ ). Javier Ortega, a 40-year-old auto body repairman from Guadalajara, says, "It doesn 't matter how many people, horses, bicycles, helicopters or planes they use…. People will go. It doesn 't matter if the fence is electric" (Griffin 363+). These people carry dreams with them in hopes for a better life. These people are willing to walk day and night through any desert and any river they come across to achieve the “American Dream.” Illegal immigration between Mexico and the United States is a serious situation that needs to be solved. To better understand this situation, one must analyze the causes and effects and come up with a solution.
Enrique’s Journey focuses and sheds more light and understanding on the aspects and challenges of extreme poverty, family abandonment, systematic issues of an immigration system and what one has to go through in the face of adversity. The book centers on Enrique who starts out as a young boy living in extreme poverty in Honduras with his family. Enrique is an older adolescent, Hispanic, poverty economic status, unemployed most times, and is in a relationship with one child. This case study will further look at Enrique’s personal experiences from a young child up to young adulthood and how that has shaped his development has a person from coming from such difficult environmental circumstances. This will also look at the different environmental perspectives in the micro, mezzo and macro level when pertaining to effects on human behavior.