The Cariboo Cafe by Helena Maria Viramontes

Dawn is not welcomed. It is a drunkard wavering between consciousness and sleep. My life is fleeing, moving south towards the seas. My tears are now hushed and faint. (Viramontes 73).

This passage resembles a similar mutual perspective which all of our characters share throughout “The Cariboo Café”. I enjoy the way Viramontes describes “dawn” like it is an actual person. By comparing dawn to a drunk, the audience subconsciously is receiving a hostile feeling. I took Viramontes’, “Dawn is not welcomed,” (Viramontes 73) as a way of saying that going on to see the dawn of tomorrow will be unbearable. It is not so much the dawn that is the unwanted drunkard, it is the idea of living to see another tomorrow in a world so unfair.

All of the characters we meet are constantly facing challenges of immigrants and foreigners in America. Although the owner of the Café is not an immigrant, he still is considered a foreigner. When we meet him, he is just as broken and alone just as all our other characters are. With a broken attitude, broken spirit and possibly even broken heart, he runs the diner without the help of his ex-wife, Nell. With the cheapest prices and a clean and honest business, he works his best to run the café. He says, “Not once did I hang up all those stupid signs. You know, like ‘we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone’” (Viramontes 68) although he is only doing this to support himself, and he still judges all costumers who come through the door, as a reader this gave me a sense of hope. I see the café owner as a glimpse into the future, a time that is fairer for everyone. I believe that the diner owner is simply judging the immigrants who enter his café as a reflection of the negative attitude that he holds towards himself as well as the rest of the country.

Living in America seemed like torture to some. This includes Sonya and Macky, they say, “the shadows stalked them, hovering like nightmares,” (Viramontes 68).  The way that the children simply describe their walk home from school gives off a feeling of unfriendliness. They speak of people piling and spilling out of buses, even the drunk who staggering around. I found it interesting that Sonya felt that their mutual loneliness made them similar. Upon reviewing it I agreed, I believe that this is how all of the characters are tied.

I think that Viramontes’ use of constantly switching of time, place, and point of view is supposed to make us as an audience feel emotionally distant and unsure of the situation. This directly relates and resembles the emotions of those portrayed in the story, as well as immigrants and foreigners in America.