Although the barn is perhaps the most important symbol in Under the Feet of Jesus, its meaning shifts and changes over the course of the novel, and from character to character. It appears in the first sentence of the novel, in connection to the uncertainty of the migrants workers’ lives, as Estrella wonders whether her family has “been heading for the barn all along” (3). The image of the barn as a destination the characters are moving towards ties into its later relationship to ideas of home and the future. For Perfecto, the decrepit barn is dangerous, but also a potential means of funding his return to his old home: “With or without Estrella’s help, he committed himself to tearing the barn down. The money was essential to get home before home became so distant, he wouldn’t be able to remember his way back” (83). By contrast, Estrella is immediately drawn to the barn and reluctant to tear it down, finding in it a refuge and a place of self-discovery; while picking grapes, she “pull[s] in the memory of the cool barn” as a source of solace (53).

Broadly speaking, then, the barn symbolizes the ways in which different characters navigate the precariousness of their lives.