Last Night in Brooklyn

Alicia’s grandmother’s saying, “El mono sabe en qué palo trepa,” or “The monkey knows the tree it climbs” (3), is a motif that frames the novel’s exploration of agency, class, and consequence. Initially, Alicia rejects her grandmother’s proverb as a “cruel” and “narrow” worldview that unfairly blames individuals for their misfortunes. However, the motif evolves from a simple deterministic statement into a complex metaphor for navigating treacherous and unfamiliar social environments. Alicia challenges the saying’s logic early on by asking what happens when a monkey is taken out of its natural habitat and starts “ascending shit they’d never even known existed” (4). This question becomes the central lens through which she analyzes La Garza’s tragic trajectory. It recasts the narrative from a story of personal failure into an examination of systemic traps.

This motif directly illuminates The Illusion of the American Dream by questioning whether an individual can be held responsible for a catastrophic fall when navigating a system whose rules are rigged against them. In this metaphor, La Garza is the monkey in an unfamiliar forest. She climbs with instinct and ambition, ascending the treacherous structures of high finance and elite society, only to find the air too thin to breathe. Alicia comes to see that La Garza could not have known the dangers awaiting her at the top. The recurring motif forces a re-evaluation of blame, suggesting that what appears to be a free choice is often determined by the limitations of one’s environment. It argues that in a society of rigid class hierarchies, some “trees” are simply not meant to be climbed by certain “monkeys.”

The custom-made suits La Garza designs are a symbol of aspiration, artifice, and the fraught power dynamics between creator and consumer. For La Garza, tailoring is a masterful craft and the vehicle for her transformation from a working-class girl into a purveyor of luxury. The suits are her entry point into the elite world of finance, representing her ability to construct an image of power and legitimacy for men. This act of creation, however, places her in a position of service, showing the central tension of her career: Her genuine talent is used to build the very artifice of the world that ultimately rejects her. The suits embody the promise of reinvention but also underscore the conditional nature of her access to power, a core element of The Illusion of the American Dream.

The complex symbolism of the suits culminates in the charged reunion scene where La Garza fits Devon for a new suit. The act is deeply intimate, a physical and emotional measuring of the man he has become. Her hands on his body are both professional and proprietary, as she asserts her mastery over the form she helped create. When Devon rediscovers her embroidered message, “HBTY,” he reflects, “I forgot how well you can make a damn suit” (127). His admiration is for her craft, but he remains incapable of seeing the woman herself as his equal. The suit becomes a symbol of their irreconcilable power dynamic: She can create the perfect image of a powerful man, but she cannot force him to grant her the same legitimacy in his world.