Have you ever bit into a soft, juicy peach and thought,” Did I just destroy half of an insect’s home?” Well, in the short story “Gaston,” by Willium Saroyan, this actually happens! In “Gaston,” a young girl meets her father for what feels like the first time. After the father buys a kilogram of peaches, he puts the tastiest one in front of his daughter, who in turn takes a bite, only to find and insect hiding in the half eaten peach. The girl’s first instinct is to kill the insect, but the father insists on treating it like a person and names it Gaston. They eventually try to find a new home for Gaston as his has been eaten in half. In the story, the father and the bug get, in a way, outcasted, which relates them as the bug (Gaston) symbolizes the father.
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He feels out casted like Gaston as stated, “They shook hands instead, as if they were strangers” (131). The situation is like Gaston’s as he felt as a stranger would in his own home, (Gaston really only had half a home). Another quote from the story to promote the symbolism of the father and Gaston, is as stated, “[Father] watched the huge car drive off and then he went around the corner where he took his coffee every morning, feeling, a little, he thought, like Gaston on the white plate” (131). This shows exactly how he would feel if he were Gaston; an outcast and left out of his own
He feels out casted like Gaston as stated, “They shook hands instead, as if they were strangers” (131). The situation is like Gaston’s as he felt as a stranger would in his own home, (Gaston really only had half a home). Another quote from the story to promote the symbolism of the father and Gaston, is as stated, “[Father] watched the huge car drive off and then he went around the corner where he took his coffee every morning, feeling, a little, he thought, like Gaston on the white plate” (131). This shows exactly how he would feel if he were Gaston; an outcast and left out of his own