Summary Of Gary Soto's Seventh Grade

The three stories to be discussed in this essay are “The Bouquet” by Charles W. Chesnutt, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s interesting to dissect these pieces of literature to see how they reflect the time period they were written in, by whom they were written, and if the stories they read have any abnormalities outside what is expected.

Gary Soto the writer of the poem Behind Grandma's House stats off the poem by saying "at ten I wanted fame." This gives the reader comprehension that the poem is a flashback to when the speaker was a young boy. The title Behind Grandma's House gives the reader knowledge about the poem's setting before reading it, also that Grandma may be in the poem. Soto writes the poem is in free verse form in first person. All through the poem, Soto writes about a young child coming of age, by doing pointless and asinine things. Like Soto writes, "At ten I wanted fame... I kicked fences. I shooed pigeons. And frightened ants with a stream of spit." Soto knows that as an adolescent you do senseless things without thinking but its just to seemed cool at the

In “Seventh Grade” the internal conflict takes place inside of Victor’s mind. Throughout the story Victor’s dilemma is that he tries to impress a girl, but in the process, he pretends to be something he’s not. After French class Victor realized that he should not try to amaze someone by not being himself, but accepting his own feelings and being who he truly is. As a result, Victor sort

In the essay “Being Mean” from Living up the Street by Gary Soto, the tone is tense and mischievous based on the author’s diction and the use of repetition. Gary Soto describes his childhood as being very violent and gives details about how it is so: “Rick and I and the Molinas all enjoyed looking for trouble and often went to extremes to try and get into fights.” By Soto saying this, it represents how mischievous he was as a child. Moreover, the title of his essay “Being Mean” fits the tone of being mischievous perfectly because the definition of mean is for someone to go out of their way to cause you pain, which he does, but in a mischievous way. Furthermore, Gary Soto also uses repetition to let the reader know how he feels about certain

In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention.

In the story “Seventh Grade,” Victor learns trying to impress a girl with a different personality is not the smartest thing to do through his embarrassing moments. For instance, Victor lingered in the classroom to say something clever to Teresa when she walks out of the door, but instead, when Teresa exits the room, he just says something dumb and embarrasses himself. “He smiled back and said, “Yeah, that’s me.” His brown face blushed. Why hadn’t he said, “Hi, Teresa,” or “How was your summer?” or something nice?” (Soto p. 17) This shows that Victor tried to act more clever than actually he is to impress Teresa, but ends up embarrassing himself while doing so. This proves if Victor had just acted like himself, thing would have been better.

In Gary Soto’s short story “The Jacket” the main character, the boy in the jacket, vows “ I spent my sixth-grade year in a tree in the alley, waiting for something good to happen to me in that jacket, which had become the ugly brother who tagged along wherever I went.” The boy blames his jacket for all the struggles that happened to him and he believes that the jacket brought him bad luck. Soto uses this to support the theme because the boy is being distracted by the jacket. Which makes him not try to improve his life. Soto uses literary elements, symbolism, and conflict to support the overarching theme: focusing on the small things like appearances can distract society from the bigger more important things.

The essay by kozol shows the harsh reality about the uneven funds and attention given to the schools were many poor and minority students attend. During a visit to Fremont high school in 2003, Kozol claims that school that are in poverty stricken areas appear to worse than school that are in high class neighborhoods. Throughout the essay, kozol correlates between the south central Los Angeles high school and the wealthy high schools that are in the same district. When he learned the graduation requirement at Fremont and the classes the school had offer to accomplish this requirements, Kozol was amazed at how academically pointless the graduation requirements at Fremont and the classes to accomplish them were. Kazol compared this to AP classes

In the story Mother and Daughter, The author Gary Soto was giving the message that mothers aren’t always perfect, but they always want the best for you. Yollie and her mother, Mrs. Moreno, had a very good relationship. The author described Mrs. Moreno as: “ A very large woman who wore a muu-muu and butterfly shaped glasses.” (Soto 203) She liked to water her lawn in the evening and wave at the cars passing by. Meanwhile, they stared at her, laughed at her, and wondered how she got so large.

Charles Baxter’s “Gryphon” provides an interesting look at standardized education and the way society views those who deviate from it. Baxter shows this through how the narrator Tommy views his new substitute, Miss Ferenczi. The character Miss Ferenczi tries to revolt against the clinical and strict standards of society and positively impact the morality and ethicality of herself, Tommy, and the fourth graders.

The author describes how Victor attempts to impress his dream girlfriend, Teresa. He tries scowling, an expression he learned from his friend, Michael. In addition, he lies by saying he knows French. When the French teacher, Mr. Bueller, speaks to him in French, he mumbles random words and makes a fool of himself. Moreover, Gary Soto portrays himself as Mr. Bueller. He describes Mr. Bueller’s days as a college student who would do anything to make

In Gary Soto’s story, “1, 2, 3,” he recounts an even dealing with prejudice that has a significant impact on the characters. The altercation occurs when a little girl falls off of a swing and her father accuses a young Mexican girl of pushing her. *[By making connections to the characters’ values in their speech and actions and repeating certain words or phrases to emphasize a point, Gary Soto explains that the way one should respond to prejudice is not by assuming the worst of people and fighting them; instead, one should try to help others, understand their point of view and values in order to prevent the negative effects of prejudice.]*

Victor Frankenstein, blinded by ambition or driven by madness? In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley embodies a cloud of characteristics that follow Victor along for the entirety of the novel. As a young scholar, Victor was driven to invest in his interests of chemistry and science. Hence, Victor soon became enamored with the ideas that lie in between life and death. Further pondering led Victor to become obsessed with the idea of bringing inanimate objects to life. The death of his mother leads Victor into denial. As a result of his mother 's death, Victor’s emotions falsely lead him to believe that he could have some control over the fate of peoples lives. Thus, Victor’s beliefs soon equated to a set of rules that he himself must follow. Consequently,

Page 1… Mom woke me up and said; “We must leave the burrow now! Grab a change of your clothes and one thing that is very important to you!”

Sixth Grader Rob Horton is socially awkward, in the first chapter he explains that he stuffs all of his feelings into an imaginary suitcase and closes it. In addition to Rob being socially inept, Rob also has a rash on his legs that he constantly gets teased about. At school Rob’s principal thinks that Rob’s rash is contagious, so he sends Rob home. Rob and his father live at the Kentucky Star Motel in Lister, Florida. Rob is an outsider and doesn’t have any friends, until he meets the new girl Sistine. He shows Sistine the tiger he found in the woods, and she thinks they have to free it. Later Beauchamp who is the motel owner hires Rob to feed the tiger. Thereafter Rob frees the tiger with Sistine only to have it shot by Rob’s father. Sistine