How Does Eddie Cope With Loss In 'Buried Onions'?

Eddie's way of dealing with loss in 'Buried Onions' is raw and real. He doesn’t have some grand strategy—just survival. The streets don’t give him time to grieve properly, so he numbs himself with distractions. Sometimes it’s odd jobs, other times it’s just walking, trying to outpace the ghosts. You see him wrestling with anger more than sadness, like when his cousin Jesús dies. Eddie doesn’t cry; he clenches his fists, drinks cheap beer, and lets the heat of Fresno bake his frustration away. The onion metaphor sticks—loss layers up, stinging his eyes until he can’t see straight. But there’s a quiet resilience too. He doesn’t talk about healing, yet small acts—like tending to Mr. Stiles’ lawn—show he’s grasping for something stable in a world where everything rots.

Reading 'Buried Onions', I was struck by how Eddie’s grief isn’t a straight line but a maze of avoidance and outbursts. The novel paints loss as this ever-present stench—like those literal onions rotting in Fresno’s gutters. Eddie copes by keeping moving. When his friend Juan dies, he doesn’t sit shiva; he pedals his bike harder, as if speed could outrun death. The jobs he takes—yard work, car repairs—are temporary anchors, ways to pretend life has routine when it’s really chaos.

What’s haunting is Eddie’s relationship with violence. He’s not a fighter by nature, but loss twists him. After Jesús’s murder, he carries that knife, not because he wants revenge but because emptiness needs filling. Soto writes these moments so starkly—you feel Eddie’s exhaustion when he thinks, 'The dead don’t come back, but the bills do.' There’s no therapy here, no poetic soliloquies. Just a guy staring at cracked sidewalks, wondering if the next loss will finally break him.

The brief glimpses of tenderness hit hardest. That scene where Eddie buys ice cream for a kid—it’s not in the book to be sweet. It’s him trying to remember what innocence felt like before grief became his shadow. Soto doesn’t give Eddie a clean redemption, just small mercies: a day without police sirens, a paycheck that lasts a week. That’s the coping—not overcoming, just enduring.

Eddie’s grief in 'Buried Onions' is like a shadow he can’t shake—always there, stretching longer in late afternoon. He doesn’t 'cope' so much as absorb each loss like another bruise. Soto strips away any romanticism; this isn’t mourning with candlelight vigils. It’s Eddie sweating through a shirt that still smells like his cousin’s blood, or counting change to buy tortillas because death doesn’t pause rent.

The way he interacts with Fresno’s landscape tells you everything. Empty lots aren’t just vacant—they’re where people vanished. The river isn’t scenic; it’s where bodies turn up. Eddie’s coping mechanism is mapping his pain onto the city itself. When he kicks at dirt clods or peels graffiti off walls, it’s not tidying up—it’s displacement activity for a heart too full of ghosts.

Yet there’s this unspoken code among the characters: you don’t dwell. Eddie’s tía might mutter about angels, but everyone else treats loss like bad weather—inhale, exhale, keep walking. That stoicism isn’t strength; it’s necessity. The minute you stop to really feel, the onions get you. So Eddie lets the sun bleach his memories pale, one scorching day at a time.