Through an examination of the actual
immigrants crossing border, Charles Bowden uses the short story "Blue" to minimize the
life and death struggle of
crossing the desert by portraying it as a game. Bowden uses the game mentality to hide the narrator's fears of dying while out in the desert. From the paper: "The Mexican population is "stereotyped as being lazy, shiftless, passive siesta seekers, people who patronized manana" (Metz 395). But how could a lazy person hike treacherous terrain while only surviving off one gallon of water? This stereotype is not holding true to the thousands of Mexicans that try to cross the US/Mexico border every year. The hardship of crossing the desert is for a reason: money. The poverty that exists in Mexico is one of the main reasons that drive Mexicans to leave their family in search for a better life. The people leave their job because of the small wages and lack of representation to fight off the hardships they must face."