The excerpt describes the care with which Enrique must take when jumping onto a moving freight car. When the narrator starts talking about the peril Enrique faces if he misses, the train is given human traits. The migrants further this when they say "The train ate him up." The train can't actually eat the boy, but it will seem as though it did because of the way the body will be torn up on the tracks.
Put the shell to your ear and hear the new warning: You die by blacks. . . Put the shell to your ear and hear the new warning: White standards are overrun by society.
