A Summer Life Literary Elements

Autobiography/Essay collection/Coming of Age (bildungsroman)

Fresno, California during the 1950’s and 1960’s

First-person narration by the author

Nostalgic, wistful, and ironic

Protagonist: Gary Soto. Antagonist: Soto’s stepfather, whom his married just a little over two years after his father died.

The conflict that unifies much of the narrative—loosely—is that between innocence and experience. Soto is honest about what young Gary does not know yet at the time the stories took place. Collectively speaking, the essays serve to create pathway toward Gary’s transition to maturity.

In this particular example of a coming-to-age narrative, the story unusually reaches its climax and conclusion at the juncture in which innocence gives way to experience. The book arrives at its climax with the words “Because we were seventeen, something had to happen.”

Ironically, the book comes to a conclusion with final lines that serves as foreshadowing: “I thought of Braly Street and family, some of whom were now dead, and how when Uncle returned from the Korean War, he slept on a cot on the sunporch. We had yet to go and come back from our war and find ourselves a life other than the one we were losing.”

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Allusions to The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy suggest the time period in which the stories are set: “He never laughed at Jackie Gleason's bug-eyed jokes, Red Skelton's hobo walk, or Lucille Balls's bosom bulging a hundred chicken eggs.”

The opening words of this collection are “I killed ants here” and references will echo back to this opening throughout the book. Multiple stories include descriptions of red ants although none of the stories are actually about them. They seem to exist mostly as imagery for the purpose of making a comparison between humans and the ants.

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As previously mentioned, a parallel is drawn between the world of humans and the world of red ants in several of the essays spread throughout the collection.

“Hate was in my heart” and “I received a spanking that caused hate in my heart for a good two hours” both engage heart as a metonym for love.

“The ants were red with anger when the siren started and the workers in front of Charlie's Market stopped their chewing, then chewed again when they thought it was safe.”