Hot Pies and Guilt To-Go Anonymous 12th Grade

It is moments of wrongdoing and subsequent atonement that constitute every child’s coming of age. Within his autobiographical narrative, A Summer’s Life, Gary Soto recreates his fall from innocence as his guilty six-year-old self steals a desirable pie. On a languid summer day, the adolescent investigates the concepts of virtue and wickedness in his youthful eyes as he lustfully stares at the savory pies in a German market and decides to steal one of them. As he walks home devouring the pie, he concludes his fall from innocence. Later, he guiltily reflects on his crime and rids himself of sin through baptism. Soto explores coming of age through temptation, sin, and redemption using literary tools such as imagery, contrast, and skillful repetition to emphasize the important role that faith has on his morality.

Soto uses vivid descriptions to transport the reader into both the mind and setting of his childhood, illustrating the role of religion, including the stages of Christian sin: temptation, sin, and redemption. The young Soto allows himself to be temporarily corrupted by succumbing to greed. As he gazes upon the bountiful display of pies around the German Market Soto is tempted to steal, as he gazes the pies, “[his] sweet...