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Summary Of A Summer Life By Gary Soto

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In his autobiographical narrative, A Summer Life, Gary Soto recreates his experience of his guilty six-year-old self, who stole an apple pie. Through his narrative Gary Soto retells his guilt through the usage of contrast, imagery, and allusion. Soto uses contrast such as “hell, holy...shadow,angle,light” in order to show the reader his knowledge of what he thinks the meaning of good and bad is. In paragraph two he states that “Boredom made me sin”(Soto 7). This quote shows that Soto knew what the consequences of stealing is, but he still decides to steal the apple pie. Imagery was another way for Soto to display his narrative. In paragraph two Soto writes “I stood before a rack of pies my sweets tooth gleaming and the juice of
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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.

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This explication will be discussing Gary Soto’s poem, Oranges. This poem is a narrative about the speaker, a twelve-year-old boy, and his first date with a girl. The poet opens the poem about the young boy walking to the girl’s house to pick her up for their date. Then, once he picked her up they walked down the street and went to a drugstore to get candy. He wanted to pay for the candy, but the girl picked out chocolate that cost a dime, when he only had a nickel.

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Imagery is used throughout, in order to engage the reader and assist them in understanding things from Saul’s perspective. For example, the sense of sight was touched on when it describes the string of light bulbs, the shadows of the ice and the rocks and spindly trees. It creates a mental image with the use of sophisticated adjectives such as humped, spindly and eerie. Also, the description of the smell is very detailed by saying that it was a “potent mix” of various unpleasing scents. This proves that imagery is a device that is essential in helping the audience imagine the setting, make connections and hold interest.

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Everyone has done at least one horrible act that has caused them to feel guilty. Gary Soto is just an example of that; he wrote an autobiographical narrative called “A Summer Life” telling his story. In the narrative he gives a visualization of what he has done as a child. His unforgettable experience of stealing a pie, and trying to fight his conscious makes him rethink every horrible act. Describing every moment of how he got the pie and how amazing it taste.

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Throughout the story, the symbolism of light represents not merely the confrontation of holiness, but freedom, and from the use of light the audience can understand Soto’s developing views of what freedom truly is. In the beginning, when freedom seemed to come in the shape of a tin-clothed apple pie, Gary Soto saw the light reflecting from the shopkeeper’s forehead; liberation laid just beyond where that man stood. At the moment where Soto focuses on this specific detail, escaping the shop with the pie safe in his arms remained his greatest concern. By pulling off the deed of fooling the grocer, Soto will accomplish what truly matters (in pie form, of course). As Soto falls in his reverie with the pie, he says, “The slop was sweet and gold-colored in the afternoon sun.”

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In the article “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto has many characters that change for example one is Victor he changes in three ways one is his positive and negative thinking, secondly by studying, and lastly his crush on his Teresa. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­To begin with, Victor changes his characteristics throughout the story for example he thinks negative at the beginning of the story and positive at the end of the story. In the text it states “He was going to like seventh grade” and at the begin of the text he says “he wished he could start his life over.” This shows that throughout the story Victor changes by think more positive than negative because at the begin of the text he says he wish he could start over, but towards the end he show positive

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“ Heroes represent the best of ourselves, respecting that we are human beings. A hero can be anyone from Gandhi to your classroom teacher, anyone who can show courage when faced with a problem. A hero is someone who is willing to help others in his or her best capacity.” - Ricky Martin. There is one thing that these three characters or people from short stories or real life have in common, they are all considered heros.

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Melinda goes in the janitor’s closet after school because her parents said she needs to stay after school to get her grades up. Melinda does her Spanish homework so she doesn´t get detention. Melinda finds out she could have a career in forestry, firefighting, communications, and mortuary science. David Petrakis stands up to Mr. Neck who turns a debate in to a racist thing.

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The narrator's awareness of Summers's power and status is represented vividly in the moment before he fires the killing shot. He describes Summers's back as "fixed, fixed on me like a preacher's eyeballs when he's yellin `Are you saved?'" (p. 604). The narrator attributes to Summers the power of the gaze, associated here with the power of salvation and damnation. According to Dana Nelson, "the gaze is structured through a species of competition--to be a gazing Gazer marks a position of potency and Subjectivity; conversely, to be deprived of that gaze is to impotently envy.

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Finding a gift or a piece of clothing that is not what was expected or unappealing can be disappointing and can cause distractions on insubstantial stuff. Do I have to keep this? Can I get rid of this? Will everyone be looking at me when I have this with me? Do I have a choice?

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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

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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.”

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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.

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In the beginning, by starting with the pronoun “I,” Soto attempts to quickly establish a connection with the readers before he contradicts his claim. Despite his acknowledgement of hell, he carries out his sin anyway; however, he wants to construct his positive attributes beforehand. By beginning with personal pronouns, he opens himself up then delves into his story. In the middle, he uses short sentences and selectively chooses quotes. In doing so, he fashions a rushed pacing, similar to his heartbeat during his crime.

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463 Words | 2 Pages

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.

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