Analysis Of Helena Maria Viramontes Under The Feet Of Jesus

In Helena Maria Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus, she uses selection of detail, figurative language and tone in order to describe how Estrella’s character develops over time,and through learning new things. The author uses selection of detail in order to describe Estrella’s development as a character. How she does so is by first stating that she “hated when things were kept from her.” She clearly does not like things that she cannot understand, she feels hatred towards the tool box because she does not understand or know what the tools in there are called or what they’re used for, “the funny shaped objects, seemed as confusing and foreign as the alphabet she could not decipher.” Estrella would ask questions in order for her to be able to understand, she never realized how she actually looked until one of her teachers pointed out that “her mama never gave her a bath,” she became offended and realized that “words could become as excruciating as rusted nails piercing the heels of her bare feet.” She later learns from Perfecto, the names of the tools that before “made no sense” and were “foreign and meaningless to her as the chalky lines on the chalkboard.” Estrella learned the names of the tools, which gave them a meaning, she reaches for a pry bar and “felt the coolness..and power of function, …show more content…
ghed the significance it awarded her.” Because she now knew the names of the tools, she became aware of how essential it is to know simple things, such as that, so much so that it inspired her to begin to