The Jacket By Gary Soto Analysis

Gary Soto was born into a poor Mexican American family in Fresno, California. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford expensive clothing. It could be a big disappoint, to not have things that people want to have, especially when they can’t afford it. In “The Jacket”, he focuses on what he had to wear during his middle school years in this case his jacket. He portrays that the jacket, his mom bought him as a failure to him. He realizes that wearing the jacket made him have a rough childhood in school. As a matter of fact, growing up can be difficult because everyone is different. In my case, I remember that I too wore the same jacket for two whole school years in sixth and seventh-grade because my mom felt like I had to follow the dress code for sweaters which had to be blue. Although, I wore that sweater every day, I wouldn’t consider wearing that blue sweater a failure to me because it didn’t fail me to have good grades or great friends, but it did affect me by having some lack of confidence. The

sweater wasn’t the best and it wasn’t the worst, but it didn’t affect me as much as the jacket did to Soto. By way of contrast, could he have imagined that the jacket had powers to make him feel so emotional or could the jacket be a symbol of the reasons of feeling so emotional? In this short story, the jacket symbolizes Soto’s lack of confidence, Soto’s form of self-destruction, and poverty in his family.
If the narrator feels that the jacket is making him stay with the ugly boys in lunchtime and feels that his classmates say bad things about his jacket, he may have a lack of confidence. His insecurity seems to rise throughout the story as well. He feels that the jacket is the reason why he has problems in school. For example he says, “That was the first afternoon with my new jacket. The next day I wore it to sixth grade and got a D on a math quiz.” He blames the jacket for earning a bad grade and feels that the jacket is the bad luck. But that’s him believing it and that’s why he is so sure it’s the jackets fault. Probably he was thinking too much about the jacket that he lacked confidence about passing the math quiz. Also, when he believes that the teachers were talking and making fun of him with his jacket makes him feel insecure because of his assumptions, but in reality they probably didn’t notice him at all. I can feel the way he feels about the jacket and how it’s making his status low because I too in middle school felt that people would laugh at me but in reality, I know it was just me thinking of that assumption. I felt that every time I heard someone laugh, it was about me but I know I was wrong about that. It was just all in my head. In the end, Soto believes that the jacket caused loneliness in many school years.
Soto feels like the jacket is ruining his life.

He wore the jacket for many years and he felt that not one good thing happened to him. He had bad thoughts of himself about embarrassment and feeling ashamed because of the jacket. When his brother started to call him “camouflage”, he threw the jacket over a fence into an alley. From that, I feel like he was done with it as if he was finally going to let go of it but he went to grab it and when he went inside he started to mope. From that point, he probably felt all these bad mixed emotions such as frustration towards himself and aggravated towards the jacket. He realizes that the jacket made him become someone he cannot accept as a person. That’s sad because he was highly feeling depressed with all these problems that he couldn’t resolve anymore because it was already done by making one simple decision of wearing that jacket in the first place. As a consequence, he feels that the jacket was a form of destruction to

him.
Lastly, poverty can be portrayed throughout the story. Soto complains that the jacket he wanted was a leather jacket not a jacket the color of old-day guacamole. But the reason he got that jacket was because his mom couldn’t afford a more expensive jacket. It’s clear that the lack of money was a problem in which he had to keep the jacket because his mom didn’t have enough money. He complains that,” I wanted to cry because it was so ugly and so big that I knew I’d have to wear it a long time.” According to that quote, he knew that the green jacket was the only jacket he was going to have for a quite a while. And that shows that his family didn’t have enough money because or else he wouldn’t have complained and asked for a better jacket as soon as possible. But he knows that, that wouldn’t happen because his mom was trying to save money to buy the jacket he didn’t like. When his jacket was ripped by a dog, he couldn’t fix it by going to a store. His way of fixing was by adding tape to it so they can stick together. The fact that the sweater wasn’t actually fixed other than tape, shows that his family was struggling financially. As a result, these issues of financial struggles portrays the poverty in the family.
In conclusion, by wearing a simple clothing can have a positive or negative outcome. In Soto’s case, a horrible outcome because the jacket was the reason of his lack of confidence of making him believe that people were making fun of him, that he was hanging out with the ugly kids, and receiving bad grades. But he also believed that it was ruining his life and making him depressed and angry. But one thing he couldn’t control was the lack of money his family had because he wasn’t the reason why his family didn’t have money. The reason he received the jacket he had wasn’t because his mom didn’t love him, it was because his mom did love him and she bought the jacket with every cent she could possibly have. At the end, the jacket symbolizes the clothing that changed his middle school years.