Literary Elements In The Jacket By Gary Soto

In the passage, “The Jacket” by Gary Soto, Gary writes about a boy with an awful jacket that he despises. The passage uses literary elements to give the passage an interesting twist.

First,the symbol in “The Jacket” supports the overarching theme: Appreciate what you have. In fact, the boy with the jacket despised his jacket, “...that jacket, which had become the ugly brother who tagged along wherever I went.”He compares the jacket to an ugly brother. He says that since he has to wear the jacket and he cant get a new one for awhile it is like a brother that never leaves you alone and follows you. Yet later on he eventually gets use to it.” The teachers were no help: they looked my way and talked about how foolish I looked in my new

jacket.”He talks about how the jacket causes him to be embarrassed. People laughed at him and talked about him behind their backs. Making him feel really embarrassed.

Second, is the plot. The plot is the who, what, when and where to the story.“When it became so spotted that my brother started calling me ‘camouflage,’ I flung it over the fence into the alley. Later, however, I swiped the jacket off the ground and went inside to drape it across my lap and mope.”