Final Analysis In the poem “Mexicans Begin Jogging” by Gary Soto, Soto talks about crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, where he tells presumably the border patrol officer that he is an American. “And I shouted that I was an American. ‘No time for lies, he said’ and passes a dollar in my palm, hurrying me” (8)...”Since I was on his time, I ran”(11)..."Who would clock me" (19)..."As I jog into the next century" (21). The border patrol officer is not doing his job correctly, as he lets Soto into America. These lines also suggest that Soto has a new beginning when he says, “As I jog into the next century” (21). Many literary devices are used in this poem. For example, there is much repetition throughout the poem. Some …show more content…
He uses personifications specifically in this poem to write about what is going on and to describe things. “It's a hard life where the sun looks”(19)...”And its black strip of highway, big eyed/with rabbits that won’t get across ”(2)...”A pot bangs and water runs in the kitchen” (13) None of these are really human body parts on things such as the sun, a pot, or a highway, but they help describe what something does or what something looks like. In the first instance, the sun cannot actually look at something, but it could mean that the sun is visible to the humans, and if humans are out for a long time in the sun, they can get hot and exhausted. For the second line, the big-eyed highway could mean that the highway has many cars with bright headlights that are dangerous for the rabbits, the immigrants, to get across. For the third and final line, pots are not able to bang things on their own, and it could have possibly been a human who made the pot bang, preparing the meal of beans and brown soup that they survive on. There is also a simile in this poem, “Papa's field that wavered like a mirage” (24). This simile could suggest that the wind is moving the grass or crops on his father’s field and looked like an optical illusion. According to Gale Virtual Reference Library, the literary device, “tone” is used to convey the significant change of the author’s feeling in the poem. In the beginning lines, the tone is happy. The poem talks about nostalgia of when he was little, “They leap barefoot to the store. Sweetness on their tongues, red stain of laughter (5-6). (GVRL) These lines illustrate the nostalgia and happy times of Gary Soto’s life when he was probably a child. However, after line 11, the tone becomes more of a negative one. Soto later talks about Farm Laborers and how the job was not a great one. After line 19, a brighter
‘A Fabricated Mexican’ is a novel by Ricky Rivera in which he chronicles his life as he grows from a child farm worker to a Ph.D. candidate. He takes us through his journey in his search for his personal identity. In the book we find that his journey has not been an easy one. This difficult journey is due to many factors, most importantly the people who have surrounded him during this journey.
The first aspect of language, which he uses is metaphor in the beginning of the poem when he is describing the dwarf sitting outside the church. He uses metaphor as he says, “The dwarf with his hands on backwards Sat, slumped like a half – filled sack On tiny twisted legs from which Sawdust might run.” The metaphor here of the dwarf sitting like a ‘half filled sack’ is describing the dwarf and how he has a deformed body. He is being compared to looking like a sack, which is slumped and half empty. This is effective as it seems as though the dwarf cannot help himself
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he
The poem begins by introducing the main figure in the poem, a naturally talented baseball player named Hector Moreno. To the narrator, the game of baseball is more than just a simple game, “it [is] a figure – Hector Moreno” (6). Describing Hector Moreno initially as a figure closely associated with the game of baseball shows just how revered a person Hector is in the narrator’s mind. This image of Hector Moreno is quite concrete, but as the poem continues, the narrator expresses to the reader that his father died sometime during his childhood, as “his [father’s] face no longer [hangs] over the table” (18). Suddenly the image of Hector Moreno is not as concrete as it first appears, especially through the lines leading up to Moreno’s first appearance on the baseball field “in the lengthening shade” (4-5). The shadow of the narrator’s father over the dinner table when he was a boy has now taken the form of Moreno’s figure in the shade over the baseball field since the narrator’s father has died. This initial me...
With every different scene, Soto makes it flow very well by introducing each place with detail and what is surrounding the characters at that moment. I think it was thought out well and every “W” question can be answered easily. The poetic devices that I found were simile, metaphor, and personification. The similes within the poem were “tiered like bleachers,” and “fog hanging like old coats.” The metaphors that I found were “That was so bright against / The gray of December / That, from some distance, / Someone might have thought / I was making a fire in my hands.” and “Light in her eyes, a smile...” The personification I found was “a few cars hissing past,” and “the lady’s eyes met mine.” His tone in this poem was nonchalant but at the same time passionate. I used two opposite words to describe his tone because he is nonchalant in telling it; it is about something that was so simple. Though the tone is also passionate because it’s a bigger memory that someone could have and cherish. Soto’s attitude was more of carefree and nostalgic. This poem shows Gary Soto’s different colors and that is represented from when he was acknowledged for his first collection of poems in 1976 for the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum. I think that is a great accomplishment considering his family and education situation. Him and his family were struggling to find work as he was growing up, so instead of focusing on his
The author uses personification in lines 16-17 where he writes “ the shadows of this loneliness gripped loose dirt.” ( Soto 1). This use of personification is the narrator’s way of helping the reader to further understand the loneliness he experienced in life. The last use of personification relates back to the water in the last line where he describes it as “racing out of town”. The water racing out of town represents what the narrator wishes he could do. He is envious of the water’s ability to come and go as it pleases and that’s why he phrases this line in that
In the short reading “Like Mexicans” Gary Soto is undecided about what route he should pursue when moving on into the future. In his early teens his grandmother told him to become a barber and to marry a Mexican girl, Soto’s mother told him this as well. When Soto was in his twenties he ended up falling in love with a Japanese woman named Carolyn. Towards the end of the story Soto realized that the reason his mom wanted him to marry a Mexican girl was because they are in the same social class as him. At the end of the story when Soto is at Carolyn’s house he perceived that her family was different, but they were just like Mexicans because they were poor. Throughout this story Soto crossed three life changes: Culture, food,
Within “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, he states “She has a voice of gladness, and a smile/And eloquence of beauty, and she glides/Into his darker musings, with a mild/And healing sympathy (Bryant, 4-6).” The “she” Bryant is referring to is Mother Nature, which makes his statement that nature can take away a man’s pain that much more powerful. By personifying nature, the reader feels as though they can relate to “her” in a different way. A poem that uses powerful metaphors is “The First Snowfall” by James Russell Lowell. Within his poem, he states, “From sheds new-roofed with Carrara/Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow/The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down/And still fluttered down the snow (Lowell, 9-12).” The line “from sheds new-roofed with Carrara” is referring to how pure and white the snow that had just recently fallen looks. Carrara is an expensive white marble. So, Lowell is comparing expensive items to the snow, which helps put an image of a beautiful snowfall into the reader’s head. By using both personification and metaphors, the reader can relate to the words being said in a completely different way, and thus understand the abstract ideas that the authors are trying to convey in their Romantic
Emily Dickinson, in the poems “Dear March-Come In-” and “The Winds Visit” uses personification in order to create a picture in the reader’s mind. “Dear March- Come In” has personification which connects the reader to the feeling of loving March/springtime. “Dear march- come in-”, this personification is important because they use it throughout the poem. The poet used personification to make the reader think about how it feels to have spring come and go. Dickinson not only used personification in “Dear March- Come In”, but also in “The Winds Visit”, in order to establish a picture in the reader’s mind. “The wind tapped…”, this is personification
One of the many reasons that life can change for someone is because of racism. In the poem Mexicans Begin Jogging, there is a perfect example on how somebody’s life changed all because they had to run away from the danger of racism. This poem is a vivid example of how people of color always have to on the edge of their seat, waiting for next moment to run. The man from this poem was an American, but due to his physical attributions and the environment he was in, it was more than expected for him to being confused as an illegal immigrant. “And I shouted that I was American. No time for lies, he said and pressed a dollar in my palm, hurrying me” (Soto, pg. 114). This guy’s boss did not even let him explain the situation because he did not have “time for lies”. The assumption was that this man was an illegal immigration just because he was of color. In the article Race and Social Problems, there is also a deeper explanation about confusion towards people of different descent. This article talks about the frowning upon Mexican Americans. It talks about how education and social interactions are more of a challenge because of racism. This article can relate to the poem because they both address the issue about Mexican American inequality. It is very common that when a person sees a Mexican American, their instant thought is that they are not from America. The life of the man from the poem has changed because, even though he is legal, his rights are constantly being judged. The constant race against
The theme of Julio Polance’s poem “Identity” talks about being different from people or being your own person by not following what other people are doing, but doing whatever pleases you instead. The first literary device for this poem would be imagery. Julio Polance shows imagery in his poem by stating, He’d “rather be a tall, ugly weed, clinging on cliff, like an eagle wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.” He says this because he wants the reader of the story to see and experience what he does through this poem. Usually when we talk about weed vs flowers we assume the the weed is bad and the flowers are good but for the is poem it is flipped and, it is this way since the flowers represent society being being normal and the weed represents
...za there is personification in the line, “the vapors weep their burthen to the ground”. There is also a sense of irony with, “man comes and tills the field and lies beneath” because its humans working the land for crops that help them survive, only to be buried beneath it when they pass away. In the second stanza, the God granting his wish is described by the smilie, “Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile, like wealthy men who care not how they give”.
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...