Acceptance: 1) The action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered. 2) The action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group. However, many connotate acceptance much differently. The popular opinion of acceptance, however, is when one emotionally acknowledges the importance or significance of someone or something. In his short story “The Jacket,” Gary Soto writes about the period of a boy’s life when he receives an ugly, “day-old guacamole” green jacket that is made fun of and altogether convinces the narrator that the jacket is the one to blame for his lonely years. In it, Soto reveals the theme to be “acceptance is gradual” by using allusion, personification, and main events in the plot.
First, Soto alludes to the Five Stages of Grief to show that acceptance is …show more content…
The narrator rues, “I wore that thing for three years… I blame that jacket for those bad years.” The narrator is implying that for three years he was forced to wear the jacket against his will and that he loathed it, but then near the end states, “I flung it over the fence into the alley. Later, however, I swiped the jacket off the ground… .” He convinced himself that he hated the jacket because he believed that it caused him those bad years, but came to realize that perhaps the jacket wasn’t so bad after all. The narrator also accounts, “But that L-shaped rip on the left sleeve got bigger, bits of stuffing coughed out from its wound after a hard day of play. I finally Scotch-Taped it closed… .” Though the narrator is convinced that the jacket is his inanimate nemesis, he mentally toughens up and doesn’t use the rip as an excuse to get a new, better looking jacket, showing that he might regard the jacket as having a sort of sentimental value. To summarize, Soto uses key happenings in the story to accentuate the theme “acceptance is
First, Soto alludes to the Five Stages of Grief to show that acceptance is …show more content…
The narrator rues, “I wore that thing for three years… I blame that jacket for those bad years.” The narrator is implying that for three years he was forced to wear the jacket against his will and that he loathed it, but then near the end states, “I flung it over the fence into the alley. Later, however, I swiped the jacket off the ground… .” He convinced himself that he hated the jacket because he believed that it caused him those bad years, but came to realize that perhaps the jacket wasn’t so bad after all. The narrator also accounts, “But that L-shaped rip on the left sleeve got bigger, bits of stuffing coughed out from its wound after a hard day of play. I finally Scotch-Taped it closed… .” Though the narrator is convinced that the jacket is his inanimate nemesis, he mentally toughens up and doesn’t use the rip as an excuse to get a new, better looking jacket, showing that he might regard the jacket as having a sort of sentimental value. To summarize, Soto uses key happenings in the story to accentuate the theme “acceptance is