Analysis Of Helena Viramontes's 'Under The Feet Of Jesus'

In the excerpt from the novel Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Viramontes, the story of a girl named Estrella is described. Throughout the story, Estrella learns a valuable lesson from a box of tools. Viramontes’s use of the literary elements such as selection of detail, figurative language, and tone are implicated to display the development of Estrella’s character. Estrella, a very timid girl at first, eventually becomes confident and capable of succeeding in school after she learns a lesson from a box of tools. Selection of detail within the excerpt was very significant in allowing the reader to have a better understanding of who Estrella is. Selection of detail was critically used when the author described Estrella’s experiences at school.

In lines 17-19, Viramontes used figurative language portray how the tools within the tool box resembled letters of the alphabet due to the general shapes of the tools and the shapes of the incomprehensible letters Estrella had come across during her stressful school days which consisted of her being bashed and treated like a test subject. Line 14 portrays the degradation of Estrella at her school, due to the teachers never giving Estrella the help she’d wanted. Whenever Estrella needed clarification the teachers were more focused on scrubbing her hands till soreness was present, and poking and prodding her scalp with a popsicle stick. This is how the tools had a figurative relationship with the alphabet, translating into her traumatizing experiences at school. The shapes of the tools appeared to make no sense and were of no significant to Estrella, just like the words on the board, however she attentively listened to Perfecto when he showed her the tools because he was from the same, distant world as her; Perfecto was “a man who had no record of his birth except for the year 1917 which appeared to him in a dream.” (Line