A Pie By Gary Soto Essay

Everyone has sinned in their life, and everyone has felt some guilt for it, but that guilt hits some harder than others and it smote the naïve six year old Gary Soto with a compelling blow. In his autobiographical narrative Gary Soto vividly expresses the guilt he felt for stealing a pie from the perspective of his six year old self with a wide-eyed misunderstanding of religion. Using both irony and imagery Soto creates a powerful image of how his poisonous guilt pestered him.

In the first paragraph of his narrative Soto sets the backdrop of religion, a theme that plays a major role throughout his day. He “knew enough about hell to stop [him] from stealing” uses irony to establish his misunderstanding of God. He knows that bad deeds will be punished so he has a large fear of hell, but he
Symbolism of his hands is first introduced as he is about to “work [his] cleanest finger into the pie” His cleanest finger symbolizes the last part of goodness in him, but he doesn’t dirty this finger yet because a neighbor “looked at [him].” This neighbor is another godly figure. He saves this cleanest finger, keeping it pure because he didn’t want God to see him dirty it. He then informs us that he stole the apple pie, the inclusion of Irony here parallels Soto’s sin to the many sins in which an apple is the symbol and demonstrate again that religion is the main source of Soto’s guilt. In the bible Eve committed the first sin by eating an apple, Snow White ate a poisoned apple, and an apple is what started the trojan war; in general apples symbolize evil and the forbidden fruit. The inclusion of symbolism of Soto’s “sticky fingers” illustrates that he no longer is clean, he is dirtied with sin. His fingers being sticky show the sin won’t wipe off easily, it is stuck on. Cross-Eyed Johnny symbolizes another godly figure that is watching “over [Soto’s] shoulder” reminding him of his