House of Sand and Fog

One of the themes Dubus explores most intently explores how people misperceive each other even as they fear others might hastily judge them. This theme is thoroughly established in the novel’s first chapter, which describes Behrani’s shame at being negatively judged for working as a manual laborer. Every day he parks in a garage belonging to an expensive hotel. When he enters the lobby, the clerk asks him if he needs help, of which at first Behrani takes little heed. It isn’t until he walks in on the clerk helping a wealthy couple that his seemingly innocuous question—“May I help you, sir?” (22)—causes Behrani to feel a tremendous sense of shame at the dirty nature of his work. This establishes a pattern that Dubus builds upon throughout the novel, in which the thing that leads to a character’s shame isn’t the content of a given interaction or statement but its broader social context. As the character who has fallen the furthest, Behrani is most prone to such feelings, although they deeply affect almost everyone in the novel. Dubus uses this recurrent theme to critique the superficiality of social interaction.

Lester is the character who embodies anxieties about others’ external gaze most dramatically and violently. As described in Chapter 34, Lester’s persona is largely built upon imposter syndrome, which manifests as a fear of being discovered and called out as a fraud, particularly for having never won in a fair fight and being unable “to serve or protect anyone without the San Mateo County Sherriff’s Department behind him” (240). While Behrani’s greatest frustration is being disregarded or disrespected in a manner that he feels is beneath someone of his standing (although he no longer commands that standing in America), Lester constructs an authoritative persona to mask the fear that sits at the core of his being.

This performance plays an important role in the second half of the story, which sees Lester commit home invasion to demonstrate to Behrani—who wields authority much more comfortably—that he is a worthy opponent. The ensuing battle of pride has little positive outcome for either man. For Lester, his escalating crimes only serve to betray the promise he made to himself not to abandon his children. Similarly, Behrani is unwilling to back down even when Esmail’s safety is at stake—a miscalculation that costs the boy his life. Dubus uses this escalation to illustrate the dangers of allowing the judgment of others to determine one’s actions.