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A Summers's Life By Gary Soto Analysis

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Mikaila Heck Burnette AP English 11 10/27/2017 “A Summers Life” Analysis Essay Sin is prevalent in many people's lives, those who sin often feel immense guilt for it. This is true for young Gary Soto. Throughout this narrative, Soto uses many rhetorical devices to convey emotion to the audience. In “A Summers Life”, Soto shifts from a feeling of innocence and youth to one of gut wrenching sin by using powerful imagery, Biblical allusions, and purposeful symbolism to prove that as a child, he succumbed easily to temptation. 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. The repetition of the word howling has a significant meaning when referring to the pipes under his house. The pipes represent a number of things in his mind and add to the imagery with a sound that we can associate with his house. …show more content…

Through characters, nature, and light, Soto brings the influence of God and Satan on his younger self. He succumbs to the temptation of the pies even though “ He knows hell well enough to stop him.” After he steals the pie, Soto writes about the scenery of the yard. The “yellowish” branches of the sycamore and The squirrel who “nailed itself to high on the trunk” of the sycamore represent Jesus and the light of Heaven. He also references the story of Adam and Eve in the conflict of him being obedient to God or quenching his thirst for

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