The emotional core of Helena Maria Viramontes' novel, Under the Feet of Jesus, revolves around the transition to mental, physical, and spiritual adulthood of Estrella, a 13-year-old Latina girl living with her family on a migrant worker farm. To thwart Estrella's transformation, Viramontes introduces us to another character: Petra, Estrella's mother, who shows immense courage in the face of the same oppression as Estrella, but who deals with her frustrations in the opposite way to that of her daughter, contrasting with the exteriority, the passion based on the action of Estrella with the interior perseverance and based on the faith of her mother. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an original essayIn the grand scheme of the novel, Estrella's action is not limited to a single moment or action: she builds over the course of Under the Feet of Jesus, culminating in a turning point that represents the infinite moments, realizations and frustrations she experiences before it. This gradual coming-of-age process mirrors and is closely related to Estrella's recovery from the loss of her father, which is the first example of emotional growth we see in Estrella. At the start of the first chapter, we are introduced to the character of the father through flashbacks, a character whose absence distinguishes his role in the story more than his actions themselves. At the beginning of the novel, Estrella is still struggling with her father's abandonment: “[Is] he waiting like me? (22). Without the possibility of an answer, Estrella considers her own process of realization, mimicking the emotional growth and coming-of-age she goes through later in the novel: "It didn't happen so quickly, the realization that 'he wouldn't come back. Estrella didn't wake up one day knowing what she knew now. It happened to him as it did to his mother. Like the passing morning light, the absence of night, right there it does not return” (22). Not only does she struggle with the emotional trauma of her past childhood and the reconciliation of new acquaintances - Estrella also unconsciously begins to question her current paradigm. In the first and second chapters, these are subtle, seemingly insignificant thoughts that foreshadow the more intense emotional growth that will occur in later chapters. One evening, while walking home, Estrella cannot “remember which side she was on and which side of the wire mesh she was safe on” (54). The mental clarity that forgetfulness allows children begins to fade as Estrella is forced to accept more responsibilities on behalf of her family; she has difficulty remembering the black and white, good versus evil, paradigm of her youth. His perception of his reality begins to change. Even at the baseball game she attends, Estrella can't help but wonder what's really going on: "the spotlight on the ghosts on the field." Or were the lights aimed at her? Could spectators see her from where she was? This prompts him to ask, among a series of seemingly unrelated questions: "Where was the house?" (54). It is the subconscious examination of roles in the game of baseball that connects this question to those before it: we see the seeds of Estrella's maturation process beginning to grow. In processing her frustration with the realities of her situation, Estrella externalizes her emotions. - she literally forms a “second self” as part of her identity and refers to it when she acts on her new consciousness. In chapter four, we see for the.