Gary Soto’s, “The Girl on the Can of Peas,” is about a past occasion concerning his “first love.” Usually one finds their “first love” in a school yard or neighborhood; however Soto finds his “first love” on the label of a can of peas stashed away beneath a layer of garbage. The writer uses unique examples and incredible creativity to prove his point to the reader. “The Girl on the Can of Peas,” is an essay that attains superior diction to help the audience to develop an understanding of Soto’s past experience.

Soto’s writing contains a wide range of styles, such as; first person perspective, dialogue, and grave detail. The author uses first person perspective because the essay is about a past incident from his life, and I believe he uses first person to allow the reader to relive his past, step by step from beginning to end. “He flicked unripe almonds at me, calling me names, but I didn’t turn around or get mad because I was mesmerized by the girl on the can of peas, which I had pulled out of the garbage. I had also taken out a milk carton, a soup can, a tuna can, and was assembling them into a city that I intended to burn with matches” (Soto 327). This is a passage from the excerpt, which shows a creative first person perspective that allows the audience to experience the incident themselves. Notice that the author does not only speak of his longing for the girl on the can of peas, but the author writes more than is required to construct an enhanced story line.

Another example of the first person perspective is when the author addresses the reader with a question, which builds a relationship with the reader. For instance, the author tackles the audience’s attention in the first paragraph of the excerpt by confronting the reader with the question, “My first love?” (Soto 327). This questions, not only develop a relationship between the author and the audience, but let the reader reflect on his or her past first love, which allows curiosity to take over the reader. The curiosity and relationship is then formed with the audience, which gives the reader a yearning to read further into the passage to investigate the author’s “first love.”

The essay is about the author living on a poor street as a child, born to American-born parents of a Mexican background. Gary Soto is a young child and believes that he has found his first true love. Soto has some extreme feelings for this girl, however she is only a label, advertisement on the back of a can of peas. Throughout this essay, Soto pours out his feelings, emotions, and actions in order to take the reader on a journey through the story; I feel that Gary Soto’s techniques greatly assist the reader in picturing the life and actions of the young Gary Soto.

The essay does not include numerous incidents of dialogue, but the entry attains the amount needed to develop the story. The author only uses four specific incidents of dialogue, which is spoken from both the author and his older brother, Rick. “’No sir,’ I said with a screwed-up face, being no one’s fool” (Soto 328), is an example of Soto’s quotes. I believe he uses this quote along with the other three to portray the lifestyle and personality of himself in his earlier days as a five year old child. For example; the quotes, “Not there, stupid” (Soto 328), and “He’s a stupid queer Mexican” (Soto 328) reveals the common annoyance and irritability that occurs between younger siblings. This dialogue also helps to develop an understanding of the feelings and emotions presented throughout the essay at the time of Soto’s young age.

The detail included within an essay is always extremely important to the audience who reads the essay. Soto used an abundant amount of detail throughout the essay to depict the nature of the adventures and incidents that took place in the excerpt. For instance, “The girl possessed a flushed face, blond curls, a dance of light in her eyes, which were looking right at me and which had me feeling embarrassed because I had spikey hair and sticky peach stains at the corners of my mouth” (Soto 327), is an example of Soto’s explicit detail that he uses all through his entire essay. Not only does the author provide vital and rich detail concerning his feelings and emotions for the girl, but he, in addition, uses detail to describe his life as a poor and adventurous five year old.

Another example of the incredible detail in the writing is when Soto not only informs the reader of an object, but enlightens the audience with a trait or characteristic of the object. This grave detail does not necessarily have to be there, nevertheless, this detail allows the reader to depict the past events as the events are read from the page, and also enhances the storyline of the essay.

Soto’s style of writing also helps to prove the point of his entry. From the writers arguments I feel that he is trying to state that love is a mysterious word and we as people use the word love in a lot of different ways. For example, we say that we love; something, to do something, and other people. Does that mean that we love our mother as much as we do a favorite pair of jeans or new t-shirt? I would surely hope not. In the essay, Soto describes his love for the girl on the can of peas, but he never seems to mention the girl as a label or picture. Soto utilizes a unique type of diction to allow the reader to picture the girl on the can of peas as a real girl and not a simple image to advertise a brand of canned peas.

During the first part of the essay the author explains to the reader that the girl on the can of peas was his first love. Soto clarifies this proclamation by creating examples to argue his point. Some of the examples used in the essay, are when Gary tells the reader that he is memorized by the girl and he states that he peeled off the label from the can of peas and took it into his room, were he states “and in my room I stared at her with a longing that was new to me” (Soto 327). Then to conclude his point that he was in love with the girl on the can of peas, he informs the reader that he crossed a street, forbidden by his mother. During the time that Soto is frustratingly looking for his “first love” beyond a prohibited street, he realizes that his brother had lied to him and so Gary is suppressed with confusion and sorrow. However, just when the audience starts to feel empathy for the reader, Soto, in his conclusion paragraph, states that he remembered later that spring that his cat had crossed that same street and died the very next day from a splinter of wood in her eye.

In this essay, Soto does not come out and directly tell the reader that the crossing of the street was much more memorable than his experience with the girl, but he leaves the reader with the right to discover their own moral of the essay, which could be many. For example, one could think that the essay’s moral was; love hurts, love can lead us on the wrong path, or even love is a word that we use too often to express our tastes and interests. Soto gives the reader this ability to discover their own moral of the essay, by portraying his views to the audience and providing the reader with a creative style of writing and necessary detail to create their own view of the essay.

Works Cited

Soto, Gary. “The Girl on the Can of Peas.” Uncommon Threads: Reading and Writing

About Contemporary America. Ed. Newman, Robert D., Jeam Bohner, and

Melissa Carol Johnson. New York: Longman, 2003. 327-328.