A Place To Stand Jimmy Baca Character Analysis

Most individuals have experienced the everlasting joy and love that comes with caring family and friends, but the realization is that agony and despair will always win the war of light and dark, and family and friends are simply just impeding the end result. When a child is born, agony is already set in place, for screaming and crying will commence as soon as the child feels hands clasped on to him. However, this agony is soon met with joy as the child is met with his mother’s soothing heartbeat. Moreover, sometimes this heartbeat never comes, and thus, agony and despair stay within this child’s heart forever. Jimmy Baca, a lost young man who has only witnessed pain in his life, is this child. Furthermore, there comes a time in every individual’s

In the most literal sense a mother is supposed to take care of her children and love them unconditionally, but Jimmy’s mother did the exact opposite. Jimmy’s mother and father would always have arguements, and this led to Jimmy’s mother leaving his father. Moreover, one day Jimmy’s mother dropped him and his brother off at Jimmy’s grandparents’ house. And as Jimmy’s mother is driving away Jimmy states, “I tried to pull free of Grandma’s hand, and I heard her say, ‘“Manana sea major con el favor de Dios.”’ Tomorrow will be a better day with God’s help. But as she led us into the house, I knew tomorrow would never be better. Something in my life had changed forever” (17). In that quotation, Jimmy is brought to realization that his mother would be leaving him forever, and Jimmy knows that this event would inevitably change the outcome of his life. Furthermore, the loss of Jimmy’s mother caused agony to dwell in his heart forever. In addition, the loss of his mother played an immense role on the rest of Jimmy’s life, and to this day, Jimmy never forgave his mother. This agony caused Jimmy to never trust anyone again. Also, throughout the next couple of years in Jimmy’s life, Jimmy would become familiar with the bars that he would soon call home. Jimmy Baca then states, “My parents never did come, and at thirteen years old I

Jimmy always tried to keep these memories out of his head, but somehow they always found a way to come back to haunt him. Jimmy sates, “My brain would start boiling forth so many memories that I had to put toilet paper in my ears to block out the voices. Other times, however, nothing helped and I would wake up sweating and frightened, feeling I had no chance of ever having a decent life” (116). In that quotation, Jimmy is trying to shed free of all the nightmares that always seem to haunt him, but Jimmy knows that he will never be fully capable of getting rid of this memoires. Furthermore, Macaron, Jimmy’s closest friend in prison, was the only true person that Jimmy trusted, for Macaron taught Jimmy how to survive the brutal prison life. However, Macaron couldn’t fight Jimmy’s fights for him, so when Jimmy was faced with a situation with another inmate, Jimmy had to back up himself. Jimmy then states, “I planted my feet firmly apart and hit him until he sprawled out on the concrete floor. A voice inside my head kept yelling the whole time I was hitting him that I was doing this for Theresa, whose father had raped her, and for my brother, who’d been raped by those two white guys” (123). In that quotation, the reader is shown just how brutal Jimmy Baca has become, for Jimmy brutally injured an inmate who