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A Summer Life By Gary Soto Summary

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In an essay from Gary Soto's A Summer Life, a young boy makes a sweet sinning sacrifice that soon forces him to face his demons and claw his way back to redemption. Soto knows right from wrong but "boredom" makes him sin. His overwhelming eventual guilt is too much to bear when the pie tin "glared" at him knowingly. Above all, most value their self image and do good deeds to be seen as favorable people, but Soto displays careless selfish actions that leaves him feeling less than honorable. He begins in the essay with a paradox, informing us that he is "holy in almost every bone." One cannot be absolutely holy in every bone, and as a result this statement proves as truthful. After Gary steals the delicious glowing apple pie, he resides in his guilt under a "yellowish sycamore." The color yellow symbolizes cowardly behavior and a thief is that indeed. …show more content…

He tries to take the burden off and play normal games that a six year old would, but his innocent toys do not satisfy him like stealing does. He threw his frisbee and it flew away from him like "the shadow of an angel fleeing bad deeds." Finally, the author returns to his home and escapes the hot summer day to underneath his house to cool down. He stuck his ear to a pipe and heard heavenly ghosts speaking to him and advising him. Soto then comes from under the house, "crawled back to the light," and comes to the realization that his life has changed forever. Therefore, Gary Soto, author of the essay from A Summer Life, earns his rite of passage through an act that is not only frowned upon, but is one of God's Ten Commandments. "Thou shall not steal" is taken lightly by the boy who is seduced by an apple pie. Cross-Eyed Johnny points out the sinners dirty hands as he looks down on him from above. "The treasure of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death." Proverbs

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The following essay, "A Summer Life", Gary Soto expresses his guilty and impure lifestyle as a six-year-old boy. Soto uses many literary devices during his recreation of an experience he had as a boy to show his guilt and regret; furthermore, he also exemplifies the joy and thrill that his younger self-believed. Soto's use of diction expresses the evils inside him as a six-year-old; though, he uses the device also to show his guilt now as an adult. He wasn't sinful all the time he was driven to it.

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