The Theme Of Guilt In The Pie By Gary Soto

GUILT’S WEIGHT

Guilt acts as one of the strongest and most prominent emotions humans feel throughout their lives. Guilt can cause people to help others, push through obstacles, or make friends. Guilt, however, may not stop one from doing amoral actions. This can happen as a result of a perceived bonus outweighing the negative feeling one may experience from completing the action, or a heat of the moment action, where one may not fully understand the consequences of their actions.

This idea’s prominence in The Pie, a short story by Gary Soto, is very clear. The young boy in the story, although he generally acted “holy in every bone” (Soto 1), steals an apple pie. After he finishes the pie, he feels paranoid and extremely guilty. He “knew enough about Hell to keep [him] from stealing” (Soto 1) – he can understand that stealing is a sin. However, he follows through and steals it, since he decides that the pie would have been “the best thing [he’d] ever tasted” (Soto 1). Enjoying the pie, he contemplates what he does. In spite of knowing that stealing was reprehensible and that he would regret it, he still stole the pie since he saw a perceived bonus for doing so.

The story explains the relationship between a young boy and his little brother, who had physical and mental disabilities. The narrator threatened to “leave [his brother] here all by [himself]” (line 110), locked up in the attic, when his brother refused to touch the casket he would have died in had he not survived infancy. He feels guilty after this interaction, brooding about his cruelty and sadness, thinking that he “did it for [himself]; that pride, whose slave [he] was, spoke louder to [him] than any of their voices, and that Doodle walked only because [he] was ashamed of having a crippled brother” (line