Saturday At The Canal By Gary Soto Summary

Have you ever wanted to get away from your normal everyday life? In Gary Soto’s poem, “Saturday at the Canal,” the poet tells of a seventeen-year old boy who is leading a very monotonous life and one that he wishes to get away from. Using First-Person, the boy feels that his life is boring and by leaving his home town he will find happiness. He also feels that his life lacks purpose and going away will show him that his life has worth and purpose. Gary Soto uses personification, metaphors, and rich imagery to convey a deep sense of restlessness in a young man’s soul.
In lines five and seventeen the narrator uses personification by saying “the hallways stank of poor grades and unwashed hair.” This means most of the kids in that school were
Imagery is used in line twelve, “Hitchhike under the last migrating birds.” This paints an image of going to San Francisco during the spring and hitchhiking under the birds that are migrating to the north just after winter. The poet uses, “But our hair was shoulder length, wild when the wind picked up,” to give us an image of what the boy looks like. His hair is shoulder length because he does not clean or care for himself. There is no one he cares to impress in his town. Imagery is also used in line nineteen, “We wanted to get out. The years froze as we sat on the bank.” Soto uses this to give us an image of how long the boy has been wanting to get out of the town he has grown up in. When he says, “we wanted to get” this makes it sound like the boy is frustrated. Soto uses personification to emphasize the hopelessness and loneliness of the boy in the poem. Metaphors are used in the poem to convey the dreams and thoughts of the boy in the poem.
Soto uses rich imagery to paint a picture of how the boy is thinking and the type of environment of the boy is