Gary Soto Essay

424 Words2 Pages
In this autobiographical narrative, Gary Soto recreates an experience of his guilty six year old self. The purpose of Gary Soto’s narrative is to explain the guilty conscience of his six year old life. Gary Soto uses a few rhetorical devices to explain the mind of his six year old self. Those rhetorical devices are repetition, diction, and imagery. One of the rhetorical devices Soto uses is repetition. In the narrative, Soto takes two different things and contrasts them repeatedly. This makes this repetition. “A car honked, and the driver knew.” Soto then goes on telling that certain people “knew” when really they didn’t. His guilty conscience was getting to him to make Soto repeat the scenario. Soto knew that he did something morally wrong. “My mom peeling a mountain of potatoes at the Redi- Spud factory knew.” The reason why Soto uses repetition is to show how his mind wanted to repeat the event to make his self feel guilty about what he did. The next rhetorical device that Soto uses is diction. “I knew enough about hell to stop me from stealing.” He uses this quote in a way to tell that he knew it was wrong but it didn’t stop him. Diction is more of the tone in the writing. In the writing, Gary Soto’s tone was more of a nervous edge. “A car honked and the driver knew.” You can tell from how he wrote it at the time he was very scared and fearful that he was going to get caught. Another tone that could see was guilt. Soto knew he did something wrong but just didn’t want to admit it. “Was it God?” When he used the quote, he was thinking he was going to hell for his wrong doings. The last rhetorical device used in Gary Soto’s narrative is imagery. “The slop was sweet and gold colored in the afternoon sun.” Gary Soto’s words are so descriptive hat you can imagine yourself there with him. Like when he is eating the pie you can imagine the heat and the taste of it
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