ipl-logo

A Summers's Life By Gary Soto Analysis

496 Words2 Pages

Mikaila Heck Burnette AP English 11 10/27/2017 “A Summers Life” Analysis Essay Sin is prevalent in many people's lives, those who sin often feel immense guilt for it. This is true for young Gary Soto. Throughout this narrative, Soto uses many rhetorical devices to convey emotion to the audience. In “A Summers Life”, Soto shifts from a feeling of innocence and youth to one of gut wrenching sin by using powerful imagery, Biblical allusions, and purposeful symbolism to prove that as a child, he succumbed easily to temptation. In the text,Soto uses very powerful imagery to intrigue readers and depict sin and God. The references to light and the color yellow elude to heaven and God. Soto uses heavy imagery to construct a picture of temptation. The way he describes the pies draws the reader in and helps them understand how overwhelming the sin was for Soto. repetition also plays into the imagery used. The repetition of the word howling has a significant meaning when referring to the pipes under his house. The pipes represent a number of things in his mind and add to the imagery with a sound that we can associate with his house. …show more content…

Through characters, nature, and light, Soto brings the influence of God and Satan on his younger self. He succumbs to the temptation of the pies even though “ He knows hell well enough to stop him.” After he steals the pie, Soto writes about the scenery of the yard. The “yellowish” branches of the sycamore and The squirrel who “nailed itself to high on the trunk” of the sycamore represent Jesus and the light of Heaven. He also references the story of Adam and Eve in the conflict of him being obedient to God or quenching his thirst for

Show More
Related
208 Words | 1 Pages

In the beginning of chapter 5, the author talks about how the things that revolved around him was school and church. Outside school and church there were the endless street games on 122nd street. The block was safe to play on under the watch of housewives. Plus on page 39, Walter and his friend decided to hang Richard Aisles. Fortunately, the pastor came there and stopped the whole thing.

Read More
391 Words | 2 Pages

In the essay “Being Mean” from Living up the Street by Gary Soto, the tone is tense and mischievous based on the author’s diction and the use of repetition. Gary Soto describes his childhood as being very violent and gives details about how it is so: “Rick and I and the Molinas all enjoyed looking for trouble and often went to extremes to try and get into fights.” By Soto saying this, it represents how mischievous he was as a child. Moreover, the title of his essay “Being Mean” fits the tone of being mischievous perfectly because the definition of mean is for someone to go out of their way to cause you pain, which he does, but in a mischievous way. Furthermore, Gary Soto also uses repetition to let the reader know how he feels about certain

Read More
417 Words | 2 Pages

Consumed by greed, author Gary Soto reiterates his first sin with imagery and a plethora of symbols as he is overpowered by greed and must accept God back into his life. To clarify, the sin itself was fueled by greed, which the then six years old Gary Soto was not able to resist. At the time, the author stole an apple pie from a bald grocer “whose forehead shone with a window of light.” (Line 18) It is as if Gary Soto is turning away from the house of God which is adorned with windows to let in His light. The author grins at the grocer and exits, at that moment he has turned his back on the house of God, giving in to greed’s temptation by stealing an apple pie; much like Eve stole the apple from the Garden of Eden.

Read More
1042 Words | 5 Pages

In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention. Throughout the poem the narrator details all the things he does to prove how tough he is, many

Read More
557 Words | 3 Pages

Each time, he describes an angelic figure, or even God himself, to be the source of the noise. This possibly symbolizes an intervention attempt of a higher power or a guilty conscience. Whenever he has reached the “depths,” of his house, there will always be some force that odes him to make the correct choices. In conclusion, Soto retells an event of his past youth that aided in a greater understanding of morality, guilt, and sin.

Read More
805 Words | 4 Pages

To start off the poem, Soto used imagery to set the scene and allow the reader to understand what the poem is all about;"They leap barefoot to the store, sweetness on their tongues"(5-6). This quote is a superb example of imagery because it gives detail in one sentence to let the reader imagine the scene. Using imagery, this quote demonstrates how poor the kids were in the area and the neediness of a plain store that they even have “sweetness on their tongues”(41-44). To convey his meaning, Soto used a metaphor to show how unsatisfied he is with his life. “A brown kid getting across: “he’s like me”, I tell my daughter and she stops her mouth.

Read More
469 Words | 2 Pages

Literary Analysis Suspense. It's what makes us sit on the edge of our seats at movies, or has us biting our nails as we read. It’s the backbone behind any classic horror film where the babysitter keeps getting unknown phone calls about checking the children and she asks the police to trace the call only to get a call back saying it's coming from upstairs.

Read More
448 Words | 2 Pages

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.

Read More
932 Words | 4 Pages

Maturity is the feeling of needing to prove that one is sophisticated and old enough to do certain things. In the short story “Growing Up,” Maria’s family went on a vacation while she stayed at home, but when she heard there was a car crash that happened near where her family was staying, she gets worried and thinks it is all her fault for trying to act mature and angering her father. Society wants to prove how mature they are and they do so by trying to do things that older people do and the symbols, conflict, and metaphors in the text support this theme. First and foremost, in “Growing Up,” Gary Soto’s theme is how society acts older than they are and that they just want to prove they are mature. Maria wants to stay home instead of going

Read More
602 Words | 3 Pages

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” he writes a story about a husband's journey to his epiphany. Robert, a blind man, teaches the husband how to see without his eyes. Often a person with the ability to see takes this for granted, leaving them only to see what is on the outside rather than seeing people, and things for what they really are. In this short story, Carver conveys the narrators epiphany through the symbol of the cathedral. Carver develops a story with symbolism throughout his story, beginning with the first line, “This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

In Gary Soto’s short story ‘Growing Up,” the main character, Maria, says, “‘I know, I know. You’ve said that a hundred times,’ she snapped.” Maria is acting ungrateful because she doesn’t want to go on vacation with her family and she is arguing with her father about it instead of being grateful for what she has. Being grateful is feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness and being thankful. In the story Maria argues with her father about not wanting to go on vacation with her family and claims that she is old enough to stay home by herself.

Read More
710 Words | 3 Pages

In Gary Soto’s short story “The Jacket” the main character, the boy in the jacket, vows “ I spent my sixth-grade year in a tree in the alley, waiting for something good to happen to me in that jacket, which had become the ugly brother who tagged along wherever I went.” The boy blames his jacket for all the struggles that happened to him and he believes that the jacket brought him bad luck. Soto uses this to support the theme because the boy is being distracted by the jacket. Which makes him not try to improve his life.

Read More
1123 Words | 5 Pages

Everyone belongs to different places, and everyone has a different personality and identity. Identity, or the way you characterize yourself, can change a person’s actions, words, and feelings. People feel the need to belong somewhere whether it 's school or at home or anywhere else. Everyone has different personalities no matter what age they are. Children 's’ personalities are to be nice, have fun and stay a kid forever.

Read More
611 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story, “Seventh Grade,” by Gary Soto, the author pokes fun at the seventh grade boys in the beginning of a school year. The main characters are Victor, Michael, Mr. Bueller, and Teresa, a girl Victor has a crush on. In the end, Victor learns that is it is always best to be himself. The author describes how Victor attempts to impress his dream girlfriend, Teresa.

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

Gary remarks that he “coaxed my mother back to church later on that summer.” which means this was a place in time that marked a religious change in Gary’s

Read More

More about A Summers's Life By Gary Soto Analysis

Open Document