Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
There's garden imagery all over this book. Manny has a serious fascination with stuff that grows in the ground, so here are a handful of plant-filled moments that, er, crop up for us:
- The green lawns in the housing projects during the spring;
- Nardo and Manny cleaning up Grandma's yard;
- Dad's obsession with neat gardens;
- Nardo and Manny picking chili peppers;
- how Grandma's neighborhood used to be filled with awesome gardens;
- and Dad picking mint in the housing projects.
What other garden imagery stands out to you? Take a moment to note them.
Okay. You ready? Onward.
Since Manny and Nardo spend a lot of time working in gardens and fields, we know that this plant obsession has a lot to do with hard work. Whether Manny and Nardo are working in the chili fields, or they're in the sun cleaning up Grandma's front lawn, these two get down to business more than once, though we're pretty sure that Nardo is ready to quit the backbreaking work. So part of what garden represent is hard work, and different characters' relationships to doing it.
But even with all this hard work, garden imagery is also about new growth. There's nothing to harvest or clean up, after all, if growth isn't happening in the various gardens. So when Manny picks chili in order to get himself a new baseball glove (more on this mitt elsewhere in this section), we can see a strong correlation between hard work and growth. Cool, right?
Along the lines of new growth, gardens also represent moving on, or going forward. For example, take a look at how Manny imagines the afterlife will be for his Grandma after she's passed away:
Her shadow will be erased, and her soul will drift to heaven like the fluff of a dandelion in the wind. And then it will blossom in another garden, so bright the colors will hurt your eyes. That's how I imagined it. For Grandma, that's how I wanted it to be. (5.68)
When it comes to his grandma, instead of associating gardens with backbreaking work, Manny thinks of Grandma's soul as a "fluff of dandelion" that gets to bloom in a cool new garden. No longer stuck in the various hardships of her life, Manny imagines things will be light, fluffy, and bright for his Grandma as she moves onto the next.
In short, plants might be rooted, but in this book, gardens are all about shifts.