The Rain God by Arturo Islas

The Rain Good

The Rain God by Arturo Islas is about a Mexican family living in a town in the U.S Mexican boarder. The main characters are Miguel Grande, Miguel Chico, Tia Cuca, Mama Chona, Angie and Felix. The most important is Religion. In the first five chapters the author focuses on the angel family sinners and saints. Mama Chona is the mother of Miguel Grande and Felix and she is the one who always is criticizing everyone in the family because they are sinners. Mama Chona is the religious person in the family and she judges her family members of their sinners because it’s against the Roman church.

In the book the rain god religion plays an important role. There are different religions that affect the Angel family. First there is the Roman church belief, which is personified by Mama Chona. She expects every family member become an Angel. This mean that everybody has to have a perfect, innocent soul and has to follow those strict religious rules she had followed, like marriage in church or taking part in religious activities. Nevertheless, there are a few family members who cannot fulfill these expectations of Mama Chona, and as a consequence she considers some members of the family as sinners. On the one hand, for example, there are her two sons Miguel Grande and Felix; the first one mentioned has an affair with another woman, Lola, and Felix is homosexual and the affection for other men leads to his downfall in the end. On the other hand, as another example, there is Mama Chona’s sister Tia Cuca, who has a love relationship with Mr. Davies for several years, but she is not married to him, because of that she is also a family sinner. Another religious beliefs described in the book is Nina’s, who believes in spiritual contacts with the dead and could also be considered as a family sinner, since this doesn’t fit to the Roman Catholic