Gary Soto's Poem, Oranges

In Gary Soto's poem "Oranges," the poet provides us with an account of adolescent first love. The speaker in the poem is a young male who plans on meeting a girl, "The first time I walked / With a girl, I was twelve" (Soto 241). There are a few themes in this poem. The main theme is the lack of understanding and anxiety that come with first finding someone attractive and desirable. A second theme is the need for understanding from others when we are too young to have the experience to be more fully aware of mature reality.

The first theme is expressed in a number of ways in the poem. The speaker maintains he is "weighted down / With two oranges" (Soto 241). We can infer from this description that the speaker is intent on giving the girl one of the oranges he is carrying. However, we also get a sense of the anxiety felt by the boy in meeting the girl, because he implies that he is "weighted" down. This weight may be as much his anxiety and emotion as it is the oranges.

The first theme is also reinforced by the use of simile. The speaker is inexperienced in the ways of romance and love. He does not understand that in some cases the desires of the beloved might conflict with personal abilities. We see this in the fact that the boy only has a nickel and his oranges, but the girl desires a chocolate that costs a dime. We see the poet uses simile to show the desirable nature of the candy as well as the fact that the candy is out-of-reach of the boy's capacity t

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Category: Literature - G