In his short story “The Pie,” Gary Soto recreates the experience of his guilty six year-old self through the use of cachet word choice and contrasting subtle and stark imagery. Soto uses articulate diction to gracefully illustrate the feeling of guilt and the pleasure derived from it that he encounters after the stealing of the apple pie. He explains that he felt an almost inhuman, burning desire for the pie when “stood before a race of [them]” and “nearly wept trying to choose” one. The “juice of guilt [that] wett[ed] his underarms” is, in a discrete manner, warning him of the repercussions that will arise as a consequence of his evil deed, but he does not heed to it and soon winds up “work[ing] [his] cleanest finger into the pie.” He plunges his last bit of purity and innocence into sin even in “the proximity of God,” which shows how innocent and naïve most children can be. He experiences utmost pleasure while eating, as he later states that he “felt like crying because it was about the best thing [he] ever tasted.” As he retrospects on the terrific taste of the pie, the ‘pleasure’ aspect of ‘guilty pleasure’ is revealed to the reader. Furthermore, when Soto is finished eating the pie, the weight of his wronging suddenly is thrust upon him, and suddenly when “tears blur [his] eyes as [he] remembered the grocer’s forehead,” he is not able to accept what he has done and so “crawl[s]...in the…shadows” underneath his house, lying there until “he was cold.” This represents the heat of sin leaving his body as he turns back to his faith by “listening to the howling sounds of...God”, which ultimately prepares him to “[rise] from his knee” and “[crawl] back into the light” of …show more content…
The diction and imagery work together to bring to life the time that he made his momentous decision to steal the pie the pie and illustrate to us the guilt that follows his misguided