Knowingly and ignorantly, preconceived and spontaneously, but as humans we are prone to sin, it is inevitable. Young gary soto recreated a childhood experience in his autobiography, a summer life. In this book, he shared his story about the time he stole a pie from the german market. To emphasize the guilt he possessed as a young six year old, gary soto utilizes rhetorical devices such as contrast, repetition, pacing, diction, figurative language and imagery to recreate the unforgettable memory.

Soto expresses his tone of remorse and guilt, causing the reader to delve into the mind of the young author and experience the mental torment he endured. The employment of contrast and repetition are among some of the devices used to express this self punishment. After stealing the apple pie soto relates it with the biblical image of an apple got eve in deep trouble with a snake.

вќ he inadvertently contrasts himself with the first and original sinners, adam and eve, upon finding a connection between the two because of the apple. The coincidence scares him even more when young soto realizes that they were punished for their action and so will he be. Lights and glares that reflect off shiny objects, serve also as reminders to soto of his sin. The young boy, tormented by his sins, perceives the sunlight's reflection as a symbol of god. While leaving the store with the pie, young soto grins at the bald grocer whose forehead shone with a window of light, вќ and observes the light in the pie tin later and again in his mind at the end of the passage.

The light of god is shinning off items to make the boy aware of the fact that god is watching. This could also be classified as an example of repetition, the pie tin glared at me вќ and later, i saw the glare of a pie tin on a hot day. вќ the pie tin looks at him conde this piece of work, written in my junior year, was originally assigned as an in class writing. Following the completion of the essay, we were told to rewrite the essay to improve our writing. We were told to analyze a passage from gary soto's a summer life describing the decisions of his younger self using numerous rhetorical devices such as imagery and allusions.

I selected this essay to include in my portfolio because i believe it is a prime exapmle of my strength in writing. My strenghts include the use of good exapmles with accurate and precise analyses. To improve this essay i could have evaluated more rhetorical devices in order to increase the validity of my arguments. This is a good example of my development as a writer because, not only does it show my improvements between my in class written version and my rewrite, but it also shows my good observation and argumentative skills.

65279 we all experienced walking through the candy store, taking a miniscule skittle or sour patch kid. We claim that it is a harmless ldquo free sample, rdquo creating excuses to somehow justify our guilt inducing actions. Soto has a similar struggle when he finds himself bored and resorts to socially unacceptable behavior mdash stealing a pie.