Theme Of The Pie By Gary Soto

Pie and Religious Guilt On April 12.1952 Gary Soto was born to Mexican-American parents who lived a traditionally Catholic lifestyle. He grew up indoctrinated in his family’s religious lifestyle. When he grew older and decided on becoming a writer, he realized he could find humor and solace by looking back on instances like that of The Pie Essay. To convey to the reader how guilty he felt from his naivety he approaches the subject with an infantile and an overtaxed narration. His humorous tale of his guilty sic year old conscious after stealing a pie reflects the intensity at which a child takes religious moral code and the naivety they have towards the world. It also resonates with the casual reader who to might have went through similar

Soto then goes on to describe the ever present religious beings he imagines in his life following him around like when the “angels flopped on the backyard grass”, or when he heard “faraway messages in the backyard plumbing “. Soto’s incorporation of religious imagery of angels appears ungraceful and confused. The plumbing is incorporated to seem like a careless superstition confused for religion furthering the main point that young Soto knew not what the idea of God or his religious beings were and his childhood naivety skewed and misinterpreted a concept he could not fully understand. A shift occurs next when Soto shifts the blame from himself to “boredom [that] made me sin”. The shift reiterates the childish behaviors by showing a rapid change in thought process and the lack of his ability to take responsibility like an adult is needed to do. It also suggests that he is trying to justify himself to the always watching God he fears and feel =s around him. The shift leads to a dialogue of him passing by the German market and spotting a pie he dearly wanted .He describes his “guilt wetting his underarms” when he gazed at

He panics when “a squirrel nailed itself high on the trunk where it forked into two large bark scabbed limbs”. The religious imagery is used to allude to Jesus being nailed on the cross. Jesus is the squirrel on the sycamore tree or metaphorical cross. The scabbed limbs of the trees allude to the blood Jesus lost to save the world from sins as portrayed in the bible. This conveys young Gary’s guilt that makes him feel constantly watched. His comparison of the squirrel to Jesus represents his knowledge of him committing a sin, and it makes him feel as if he is contributing to the pain inflicted onto Jesus. Soto‘s “cleanest finger dug itself into the pie” while he sits under the tree. This metaphor reflects how he soiling his conscious just like he is soiling his finger in, but unlike his finger his guilt is not easy to cleanse. Gary also happened to steal an “apple pie “which is a biblical allusion to Adam and Eve eating the fruit that caused original sin. Original sin in the Catholic Church has touched everyone and has made everyone but Jesus impure. Soto’s reference to it acknowledges that he is not as extreme in his sin compared to such a concept despite how his guilt makes him feel. Throughout this section the repetition of the phrase “I knew” occurs as if to clearly display the irony of him knowing but not knowing that what he is doing is not as serious of a mistake as he