Gary Soto, an American-Mexican Poet born in 1952, published an array of pieces that recount the realities of his upbringing. Growing up in San Joaquin Valley, ensured his involvement in the fields. Living in a drought prone region, droughts were inevitable, and the community remained vulnerable to hardships that came along with the drought. These hardships experienced were transformed into a visible theme found throughout this poem. Weather conditions can make people vulnerable to the effects experienced. Examples of his hardships transformed into poetry can be seen with, “The Elements of San Joaquin Valley”, Too many tamales, “Where Sparrows Work Hard”,. Although his theme is visible in many poems, one in particular is, “The Drought” recognizes and conveys the hardships that were faced. Several poetic devices were used to aid the noticeable theme, such as simile, personification and hyperbole are used in order to successfully convey the powerful theme.
Gary Soto uses personification for readers to relate to and to
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Examples of these poetic devices used to represent the struggles Gary Soto’s community went through can be found all throughout his poem. In the first stanza, he uses personification to give inanimate objects human characteristics, for example the clouds shouldered. The simile was used to compare two things in order to get a sharpened idea of what the scenery was like. Hyperbole was used to exaggerate the thinness of the children as the have less and less food. Soto created a powerful meaning and expressed it through this poem, the theme illustrating the difficult times he went through. Although they had to go through these difficult events, the drought would be over and the hope remained that rain would come