The Glow of First Love: Color Imagery in Gary Soto’s “Oranges”
Jane Doe
Ms. X
English I Honors
24 September 2013
The Glow of First Love: Color Imagery in Gary Soto’s “Oranges” The poem titled "Oranges" by Gary Soto is about the flush of first love and all the small, quiet gestures that create a love story. Throughout the three-stanza, fifty-six-line love poem, Soto paints all of the intricate gestures of first love with a palette of colors culminating in an image of fire representing the “warmth” generated by young, unsullied, innocent affection. Soto’s first instance of color imagery begins on line 10 when the twelve-year-old protagonist, perhaps Soto’s own twelve-year-old self, standing before the home of the girl he is about to take his first hand-holding “walk” with, notes that, “her house [is] the one whose / Porch light burned yellow.” Against the backdrop of a frosty December day thick with “fog hanging like old / Coats between the trees,” (45-46) the girl’s porch light burns bright yellow “night and day, in any weather” (11). Like a beacon providing safe harbor to sea-bound vessels in a storm, our protagonist makes his way safely to his girl’s house by following the yellow light. Awaiting him are her rosy red cheeks “bright / with rouge” (14-15). Her face is aglow with healthy warmth that creates a soothing effect against the “frost cracking” (5) cold of the wintery December day swirling around them. In the last stanza, when the protagonist releases his girl’s hand, so that she can eat her carefully selected candy plucked from a display “tiered like bleachers” (26) and he can peel his bright orange, Soto creates his most powerful color imagery in the poem. Soto writes of the protagonist’s bright orange “that, from some distance, / someone might have that thought / I was making a fire in my hands” (55-56). The affection he respectfully shows his girlfriend, and this tender moment they both share acts as a shield sheltering them against the elements of a “gray” (53) December day. Soto effectively uses color
Ms. X
English I Honors
24 September 2013
The Glow of First Love: Color Imagery in Gary Soto’s “Oranges” The poem titled "Oranges" by Gary Soto is about the flush of first love and all the small, quiet gestures that create a love story. Throughout the three-stanza, fifty-six-line love poem, Soto paints all of the intricate gestures of first love with a palette of colors culminating in an image of fire representing the “warmth” generated by young, unsullied, innocent affection. Soto’s first instance of color imagery begins on line 10 when the twelve-year-old protagonist, perhaps Soto’s own twelve-year-old self, standing before the home of the girl he is about to take his first hand-holding “walk” with, notes that, “her house [is] the one whose / Porch light burned yellow.” Against the backdrop of a frosty December day thick with “fog hanging like old / Coats between the trees,” (45-46) the girl’s porch light burns bright yellow “night and day, in any weather” (11). Like a beacon providing safe harbor to sea-bound vessels in a storm, our protagonist makes his way safely to his girl’s house by following the yellow light. Awaiting him are her rosy red cheeks “bright / with rouge” (14-15). Her face is aglow with healthy warmth that creates a soothing effect against the “frost cracking” (5) cold of the wintery December day swirling around them. In the last stanza, when the protagonist releases his girl’s hand, so that she can eat her carefully selected candy plucked from a display “tiered like bleachers” (26) and he can peel his bright orange, Soto creates his most powerful color imagery in the poem. Soto writes of the protagonist’s bright orange “that, from some distance, / someone might have that thought / I was making a fire in my hands” (55-56). The affection he respectfully shows his girlfriend, and this tender moment they both share acts as a shield sheltering them against the elements of a “gray” (53) December day. Soto effectively uses color