Summer Life

Back in 1990, a man named Gary Soto decided to write an autobiography about himself, titled A Summer Life. One of the more interesting portions of the book was when Mr. Soto described a summer day back when he was six years old. On that day, young Gary found out what it felt like to be a true sinner, as he stole an apple pie from the local bakery. Some readers found this as one of the more interesting parts, not because of the plot, but because of the literary devices used, such as detail, imagery, and pacing. The three aforementioned literary devices are almost a backbone to the story, because without those three, the story would be shortened and fairly bland. The following three paragraphs will each describe a literary devices used by Mr. Soto to enhance the quality of his story.

During this portion of his autobiography, Mr. Soto wanted to carry the feelings and events of an important day in his life across to the reader. One of the ways that Mr. Soto accomplished that feat is through his usage of extremely vivid detail. One of the more vivid sentences in this story was “I laid more pieces on my tongue, wet finger-dripping pieces, until I was finished and felt like crying because it was about the best thing I had ever tasted.” That string of thirty words carries over a great load of detail to the reader. Phrases like “finger-dripping” and “felt like crying” gives the reader an idea of just how good the pie tasted. It lets the reader know that it must have been sweet and moist, rich and golden. One could also argue that the sentence used as an example or detail is also a prime example of imagery.

The next literary device to be discussed is imagery. As previously stated, many sentences could serve as excellent example of imagery, however the sentence that most portrays an idea is on line 40; “The slop was sweet and gold-colored in the afternoon sun.” The line tells you how messy the pie was (slop), and then to tell you exactly what the pie mess looked like, it tells what color it was, and if the environment affected its color (gold-colored…afternoon sun).