Jesse

“By the time I was seventeen, in junior college, and living on fruit snatched from neighborhood trees and Top Ramen, I no longer thought God was the creaks rising from the wood floor.”

Gary Soto begins Jesse with an allusion to Jesse’s God, highlighting the importance of his faith. This quote also demonstrates a maturation in Jesse’s understanding of God. Rather than think of God as magical, as he might have done in childhood, Jesse now understands God as a power that he prays to and relies on. The quote also establishes telling details about Jesse’s socioeconomic status. It is revealed that he is 17 years old and living off stolen fruit and ramen, emphasizing his poverty.

“I thought of God almost every day, but when Abel and I went to chop cotton I thought of César Chávez.”

Here, Jesse unwittingly makes a connection between God and American labor leader César Chávez. God is an important force in Jesse’s life, but the figure and leadership of Chávez is becoming more prominent. In this quote, Soto replaces the image of God with the image of Chávez, as though they are interchangeable. This helps Soto promote Chávez as a god-like figure whose importance is second only to faith.

“I breathed the thick air. I had always wanted to go to England and stand on a cliff, facing seaward. The wind would be clean and so refreshing that I imagined all you had to do was stand there for a few minutes to get your lungs clear.”

This quote characterizes Jesse’s environment as polluted, both literally and metaphorically. Jesse is aware of this pollution but is mostly helpless to do anything about it. Instead, he dreams of environments in which clean air is literal and metaphorical. He imagines England’s seaside cliffs as a haven in comparison to his home.