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What is the poem Oranges about?
Gary Soto's poem "Oranges" describes the feelings and thoughts of a young boy as he ventures out on a first date with a girl in the grayness of a December afternoon. Challenged at first when he finds he does not have enough money to pay for a chocolate, he finds the warmth of human understanding saves the day.
What is the theme of Oranges by Gary Soto?
In 'Oranges,' Gary Soto engages with themes of youth, happiness, and memories. The speaker, who is looking back on this time in his life, is recalling with pleasure his first date. He was quite young, only twelve, and he was meeting up with a girl in the freezing cold, December weather.
What is the style of the poem Oranges?
"Oranges" is written in free verse. While it's true that free verse is the poetic equivalent of anything goes, that doesn't mean you're free from considering form and meter in this one.
What does orange symbolize?
Orange stands for danger; it's used for safety equipment and to indicate areas where we need to exercise caution. Orange is also a symbol of autumn–the brilliant color of fall foliage and of ripe pumpkins. We think of Halloween and Thanksgiving, and of the bounty of the fall harvest.
What do the Oranges symbolize in the poem Oranges?
Since that orange has come to symbolically represent love, we also get the sense that it's the warm, radiant energy of love that the speaker is holding for everyone to see—an intense, summery bright spot in the gray of everyday life.
What is the setting of the poem Oranges by Gary Soto?
Many of Soto's works reflect his childhood in Fresno, California, the setting of this poem.
What figurative language is used in Oranges?
In “Oranges”, Gary Soto uses metaphorical language to make comparisons in this poem about the theme of love. Sofo uses metaphors towards the end of the poem when he compares the boys orange to a fire in his hands “I peeled my orange, That was bright [...] Someone might have thought I was making a fire in my hands”.
How does the poem Oranges use imagery?
There are several contrasting images in this poem. It is winter, December, so the weather is gray and cold, contrasting with the oranges which are warm and brightly colored. The girl's porch light is yellow in all weathers, whilst the fog is like old hanging coats.
What is the poem Oranges by Gary Soto about?
Oranges by Gary Soto Poem: The poem named ‘Oranges’ by Gary Soto is a very charming poem about a boy who narrates his experience of his first date with a young girl. The poet has made appropriate use of imageries that appeal that the boy’s nerves are on full display, which is quite understandable throughout the poem.
What is the theme of Gary Soto's poem?
In this poem, Gary Soto engages with themes of youth, happiness, and memories to give a very joyful and charming experience to the readers. The speaker recalls his youth days, where he went on his first date. He was pretty young, only twelve, and was meeting up with a girl in the cold of December.
What literary device is used in the poem Oranges?
Oranges by Gary Soto Literary Devices. The poet has taken the help of many literary devices in the poem ‘Oranges,’ not just examples of similes, enjambment, and alliteration. The use of a simile can be found twice in the poem. The first example is in the first stanza with the lines “I turned to the candies / Tiered like bleachers”, ...
What is the story of the oranges?
The poem narrates the story of a young boy’s walk to the girl’s house, to the drugstore and outside again. Soto has used diction and syntax wonderfully in this poem for ...
What style of poetry does Soto write?
Soto has written the poem in the free verse style , and the lines do not have a rhythmic or metrical pattern, which is a common technique in contemporary poetry. This also benefits the narrative structure of the poem.
How many lines are in the oranges?
The poem ‘Oranges’ by Gary Soto is short, consisting of two stanzas separated into a set of forty-two and fourteen lines, respectively. The stanza break occurs between the main action inside the store and then outside. Soto has written the poem in the free verse style, and the lines do not have a rhythmic or metrical pattern, ...
What does the boy give the lady at the counter?
As partial payment, the young boy manages to give the lady at the counter two of his oranges in place of the money. He puts the nickel and the oranges on the counter table and is worried that these two things might not be accepted as a legit payment.
What is the theme of the poem Oranges by Gary Soto?
What Is the Theme of "Oranges" by Gary Soto? Mikael Miettinen/CC-BY-2.0. The themes present in the poem "Oranges" by Gary Soto include love, maturation and poverty. The poem is an account of a first date between a young boy and girl.
What is Soto's theme in Oranges?
Soto is known for examining the effects of poverty in his poetry. In "Oranges," that theme is symbolized by the boy's inability to pay for the candy. However, his poverty is overcome with kindness and love when the store clerk accepts the orange as payment for the candy.
What does Soto use to describe the relationship between the young couple?
Although Soto never explicitly uses the word "love" to describe the relationship between the young couple, the emotion saturates the poem. The theme of love is implied in the way that the boy notices and describes all of the small details about the girl, such as "her face bright with rouge" and "light in her eyes, ...
How is Oranges told?
‘‘Oranges’’ is told in the first person, from the perspective of one of the participants in the poem, but in some sense the person who is telling the story is a very different person from the boy who walks with the girl. The speaker of the poem is clearly telling the story years after the action took place. This distance in time gives the poem a feeling of calmness that would be lacking if the events were presented with more immediacy. The very fact that he has chosen to tell about this event, noting that it was the first time he was in a date-like situation, indicates by itself that this was an important moment of his life. Soto’s decision to draw attention to the adult speaker in the first line, though, helps to show readers that this one long-ago event is a relatively small part of an overall life. In the last line, he takes an even wider perspective, switching to a different point of view, relating what an observer who was far away from the action might have seen and how they might have interpreted what they saw.
What is an orange poem?
‘‘Oranges’’ is an example of a narrative poem, or one that tells a story. Narrative verse is traditionally considered to be one of the four basic literary modes of poetry, along with lyric, dramatic, and didactic poetry. Narrative poems include the oldest poems known to history: epics such as the Iliad of Homer (circa eighth or ninth century BCE) and the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, which is dated to the seventh century BCE. Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century story The Canterbury Tales is a collection of interrelated narrative poems tied together to make one overall story. Many older narrative poems are believed to be stories that were passed from one person to another, from generation to generation for hundreds of years before finally being written down.
What does the crunchy frost do in Soto's poem?
The crunchy frost has melted to wetness, which makes cars on the street hiss on the pavement and moisture has risen into the air as fog. The girl’s hand is uncovered during the walk home, allowing the boy to take hold of it briefly. At the end of the poem, Soto uses the weather as a visual aid.
How does Soto use the cold weather?
Soto uses the cold weather as a motif, or recurring device or image used to emphasize the mood or message of the work. In the first segment, the boy’s loneliness and foreboding about approaching a girl’s house for the first time is magnified by the fact that he is cold. Mentioning the external effects of the cold, such as his visible breath and the sound of frost crunching beneath his footsteps, draws attention to his apprehension by showing just how hyper-aware he is to sensory input. When the girl comes out of her house the first thing she does is pull on her gloves, which is a reasonable defense against the cold air but also draws readers’ attention to her overall defensiveness in this new and uncertain situation.
Why does Soto keep the action moving?
Instead, Soto keeps the action moving so that readers want to know what happens next. The fact that the story of the poem is something that happened to him, or at least could have happened to him, helps create a personal bond with readers, making the fate of the boy in the poem that much more meaningful to them.
Is Oranges free verse?
As with most narratives, Soto’s poem is more concerned with the story that it is telling than with using a particular poetic style to capture readers’ imaginations. ‘‘Oranges’’ is written in free verse—it does not use any particular rhyme scheme or rhythm pattern to enforce its message.
