Anna Zhang
2/21/2022
Block A
“The Pie” - Gary Soto: Analysis
Gary Soto's memoir, "The Pie", depicts how religion influenced his younger selves' tough
decisions and explains his guilt as a result of his struggle with making moral decisions. In this narrative,
he regularly used vivid imagery, contrast, and language to represent a young kid, presenting us with an
unique perspective on a six-year-old. This story illustrates how the author uses images from everyday
experiences and exaggerates the acts with the tone of intense guilt and dilemma to provide the reader with
realistic and relatable imagery of both the child's thoughts and the narrative's setting. The story's premise
feels like it is almost based on the phases of Christian sin: temptation, sin, and redemption. The boy
allowed himself to be tempted by the temporary euphoria of his greedy "sweet tooth"s' satisfaction, as he
narrates "juice of guilt wetting my underarms," giving us indirect imagery, where the author uses "juice of
guilt" instead of the direct word "sweat," depicting his struggle with morality. The child's choice of
"sinning" leads to a scene in which he sits on a lawn and prepares to "work my(his) cleanest finger into
the pie." In this context, his cleanest finger refers to his final shred of innocence being almost drowned
under the pie, signifying his greed, but he wasn't able to do so under the eyes of his neighbor, causing his
reemerged guilt. Another scene where there's a symbolic meaning of Soto’s hands is when he rejects his
neighbor Johny’s request for a share of his pie, while his hands were soiled with the residue of the pie.
Here Johnny asks innocently “your hands are dirty”, as the the two seemed to be represented to us in a
contrasting manner, where Johnny seems pure and innocent, and Soto’s hands shows his corrupted values
as he rejects Johnny’s request. The moment near the end, as the youngster finishes his pie and is left with
a "face sticky with guilt," depicts his anxiety from the line “I got to my feet, stomach taut, mouth tired of
chewing, and flung my Frisbee across the street, its shadow like the shadow of an angel fleeing bad
deeds.” His fear is obvious here, when his religious beliefs begin to impact his own image of himself, as
he sees the Frisbee as an angel escaping bad deeds, which he perceives as himself after his minor sins.
Afterwards, he lay under the house until it was too cold, and came back into the light, which again shows
a contrast in which symbolizes Soto’s “rebirth” where he comes out of the dark, into the light. The last
line of the story where the child comes to an Epiphany, “I knew sin was what you took and didn’t give
back” Soto has already consumed the pie, leading to his maturity where he starts comprehending his
religion differently than once before.
