Marble Champ Analysis

Marble Champ Have you ever worked hard at something you're not necessarily good at? Well in the story “Marble Champ,” by Gary Soto the main character Lupe shows us the theme of hard work pays off in the end. “Hard work will pay off later. Laziness pays off now.’’ -Unknown In the beginning Lupe had to work hard and it paid off. For example, she practiced shooting a target so her aim would be more accurate. This shows that she was patient and did her best even though it probably wasn’t super fun to practice. In addition, it stated in the story that, “She squeezed a rubber eraser one hundred times,hoping it would strengthen her thumb.” This proves that Lupe is a hard worker because she never won sports so she needed to work even harder. Also, in the beginning she won all these awards at school it says she was, “the school’s spelling bee champion, winner of the reading contest at the public library three summer’s in a row, blue ribbon awardee in the science fair,” and more Therefore she had to work hard for all of those awards because they didn’t come easy.

To illustrate, Lupe was terrible at sports in the beginning of the story it said, “the truth was that Lupe was no good in sports. She could not catch a pop-up or figure out in which direction to kick a soccer ball.” As a result, she won the competition and in the beginning she didn’t know how to do any sports. More importantly, in the story she beat her first opponent easily. This reflects that, she worked hard and stayed determine. Another reason is that, in the story it said “She also had to admit that her thumb was weaker than a neck of a newborn chick.” This shows, she was working hard because her thumb was weak in the beginning, yet she ended up winning the competition and you can’t really win with a weak thumb so she obviously worked hard. All of this tells me, that the theme of marble champ is, hard work pays off in the