Poem Analysis: Small Town With One Road By Gary Soto

Soto uses repetition and motif to describe how weather can depict the mood of a story and how little things can have great effects on people. Gary Soto includes a motif of weather throughout the poem to illustrate the mood and setting of the poem. Soto begins with “December. Frost cracking,beneath my steps, my breath before me. Her house the one who burned yellow night and day, in any weather” (5-8). This motif describes what is going on in the beginning of the poem and hints what the story will be like based on the mood that it sets. Soto uses the motif throughout the poem and he uses it a second time as he leaves the store “Outside, A few cars hissing past, Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees”(44-47). This time, Soto displayed the

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. “He looks both ways and then leaps across the road where riches happen on a red tongue”(34-38). The metaphor used shows how unsatisfied the brown person, the daughter, and the father are in their life. This poem clearly depicts how some people in the world live in poor conditions and have unhappy lives. The poem doesn’t only show hatred and sadness in life in impoverishment, but it also shows how you can get out by perseverance like Gary Soto did in his personal life through literature and hard