As a child, a bored Gary Soto finds himself either watching shadows flopping on the back yard grass or crawling underneath his house looking for something to do. His young self, Soto assumes that he has known enough about what was morally right and wrong, yet the tempting quality of a pie pressures him into stealing it from a grocer regardless. Gary Soto recreates the experience of his guilty six-year-old self through the use of word choice and biblical allusions. Soto utilizes diction both specifically pertaining to the bible or simply ones that involve what he has undertaken from his actions, which interpret into his overall feelings of remorse after stealing the apple pie caused from boredom. The use of words such …show more content…
After stealing the pie in the German market, holy figures like Christ and angelic qualities are portrayed such as,”The bald [grocers]forehead shone with a window of light,”and,“A squirrel [nailing] itself high on the trunk, where it forked into two large bark-scabbed limbs.” With Soto’s prior knowledge about “hell to stop [him] from stealing”,the temptation for choosing one of the pies pressures in him forgetting “the flowery dust priests give off” and stealing a pie. Soto's decision for stealing the desirable pie only ends in his action of wrongdoing by “[licking some of the crust and [closing his] eyes and [taking] a small bite,” which resembles the trouble that's placed upon Eve and the apple “because Sister Marie had shown [him] a film about Adam and Eve being cast into the desert.” From that point on, Soto’s innocent six-year old quality merged into a more savage-like behaviour that exhibited a harmful effect upon others like Cross-Eyed Johnny. Soto’s refusal to share the pie with Cross-Eyed-Johnny had led to Johnny “[returning] home to climb his roof and sit watching [Soto] eat the pie by [himself]”, but “[jumping] off,” which indicated Cross-Eyed Johnny in becoming a fallen angel. Over the course of his actions, Soto returns back home to quench his thirst. Biblically by drinking the water, the “cleansing attribute” water has embarks onto Soto’s manner of crawling underneath his house for seeking a response that would change his thoughts of boredom from the repent he exhibited as he lay there with questions listening. When Soto,“lay until [he] was cold and then crawled back to the light, rising from one knee, then another, to dust off [his] pants and squint in the harsh light,” His decision to do so makes him “rise” above his wrongdoings during his episode of discerning it, which in return, ultimately alludes to