Essay Sample on Paul Castro: A Prideful Second-Generation Immigrant Seeking Fairness

Introduction

Paul Castro is an inquisitive 18-year old second-generation immigrant who wants fairness. His grandparents had come from Cuba and had worked extremely hard to own the large piece of family land that the family now boasted of. So proud of their heritage were Castro's parents that they had kept the family name. Castro is lean and tall for his age but it is his eyes that tell you that he is always inquisitive. He also has fairly long and strong arms with considerable upper body strength. His eyes are almost always squinty and due to his droopy eyelids, it is always difficult to know whether he is simply not interested in a conversation or wants to go to sleep right away. Castro is also a hard worker and he prefers tasks that require him to use his hands. As long as the weather permits, he attends to the farm and during the tomato harvesting season, it is difficult to isolate him from the rest of the hired hands. His ability to blend in with the rest of the workers is something he has always been capable of since he could wander abound.

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During the harvesting season, Castro's farmhouse is a beehive of activity with pick-up trucks, people, and a few horses. Most of the permanent and temporary employees on the firm are immigrants and his father has in the past told him that he admires their work ethic. If you are to only visit the family during harvest time, you would witness ordered chaos, just a few miles from Fresno City. However, a keen observation reveals something peculiar, even sinister in the categorization of people during the harvest time. The bulk of the workforce is made up of unskilled immigrant laborers who spent almost all their time on the farm and sleep in the barn for up to a week. Castro's father hardly gets to interact with them. However, almost always, two accountants take up residence in the family's large guest house during the harvest time and their role is to supervise the loading and also pay the laborers. It is a system that his father has kept fervently. When he was young, his father would not let Castro interact with the men down on the farm. Now that he is grown up, his father only shows displeasure when Castro only comes up to the house in the early hours of the morning from the barn after having a fiesta with the men.

What Castro desires most is fairness but his time in the farm has almost always brought him displeasure and anger. It is during the harvest time that the reality of the way that his family unfairly treats the workers hits him in the face. Often, he has come to recognize that maybe the thing he desires the most cannot ever be found in the farm or the family's business because every harvest time the unfairness of how the least fortunate are treated becomes clearer in his mind's eye.

Character Sketch

Paul Castro's wastebasket is full of cans of Monster Drink, price tags, and broken bottles of whiskey. When studying or watching TV in his room during the weekdays, he likes to take energy drinks hence the dozens of cans of Monster Drink in the wastebasket. However, almost every Friday and Saturday night, Castro likes to meet with his friends and sample the latest entertainment joints in Fresno. He comes home with a whiskey bottle hidden inside his jacket pocket. The other thing to be found in his wastebasket is the price tags for his trendy clothes. He uses up most of his allowance on new clothes. The price tags reveal his appetite for the latest collection.

His father's wastebasket is filled with fruit remnants, receipts, and torn cloth price tags. Earnest Castro hates alcohol, the reason why you will only find fruit remnants in his wastebasket especially common figs. He shared the passion for nice clothes with his son; hence the price tags for the clothes in the wastebasket. Besides, as an accountant, his wastebasket is full of receipts for the occasional family assets that he buys quite often. Everything he does has an elaborate paper trail and it is only the unnecessary receipts that find their way into the wastebasket.

Poem

At least one in every month,

She takes out the Mustang,

First, she polishes it and waits for the sun to come up

before sitting on the passenger side.

She reads the letters he wrote her,

And hates whenever she comes across the word "Afghanistan."

She remembers their wedding,

And her long white dress

As white as the snow.

She leans over to kiss him as the guest cheer wildly

She remembers the trembling and the excitement engulfs her

That when she shudders and wakes up.

She walks to the driver's side and fires off the engine

Drives down the road whispering "George, I am okay, but I still miss you."

Though it is over ten years since she watched him fly away

She still wakes up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat

She sees the men knock on her door

And mumble something before she hears "we're sorry for your loss Ma'am."

It was an IED, they say

Took out the whole squad

She parks the Mustang and walks briskly to his grave

She smiles and tells him how their son is growing

But most of all,

She tells him how elegant he looked at their wedding

And how she wishes he did not board that plane,

Because the cold sweats just won't go away.