Character Study - Sheila Mant

With her red hair and “well-spaced freckles,” Sheila Mant is every teenage boy’s dream. At least that is how she seems at first to the narrator of “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant.” He soon learns, however, that Sheila has nothing at all in common with him. What is more, her beauty is superficial. “I think fishing is dumb,” she says, making a face show that her friend and his hobby mean nothing to her. This line suddenly makes Sheila less appealing to the narrator. On their date, Sheila rattled on about fraternity men, tanning, and college. She did not know that the narrator was trying to choose between her and the large fish that he has on his line. Eventually, thinking about how he had chosen Sheila, he decides he would have been better off with the fish. From McDougal-Little, 1997 P. 32

Steps to Write a Poetry Analysis:  Thesis statement that explains exactly the topic of your piece  Title and/or author of the poem  Specific quotes from the poem in quotation marks  Specific examples from the poem  The reader’s own opinion  Third person writing – NO “I”

Analysis of “The Map”

In “The Map”, Soto uses a man who marks on a map to symbolize the geography and weather of different places around the world. This poem is about a man named Molina, who squats at noon with a map and marks on it with a pencil. His markings symbolize weather and geography of any where from Spain to Central and South America. Gary Soto displays this symbolism throughout his poem, for example: “He unfolds a map and, with a pencil, Blackens Panama Into a bruise; He dots rain over Bogotá, the city of spiders, And x’s in a mountain range that climbs Like a thermometer” These lines represent symbolism because Molina is not really making rain in Bogotá, but he is representing rain by dotting over Bogotá’s location on the map. In a way, he is really playing as God with the map as the earth. Also, he marks a mountain range with x’s to symbolize the mountains. Molina’s markings on the map are symbols for geographical and weather conditions. In this case, symbolism is the best choice for a literary element, and Soto used this symbolism to affect the outcome of the poem because the markings represent something else, and the symbols add to the imagery of the poem. The markings on the map also symbolize Molina’s superiority over the land and his ability to play God over the land on the map. This map does not just show geography, but also weather. “The Map” uses markings to symbolize real weather conditions in different places and the descriptions become richer as Molina adds symbols to the map. From http://project1.caryacademy.org/echoes/poet_Gary_Soto/SamplePoemsSoto.htm