While reading "Oranges" by Gary Soto, I had many mixed emotions. I started off getting the feeling that this story was a love story about a boy who finds his first love and buys her a chocolate bar to show his love for her. But as the more i discussed the story with my group in class, i started thinking that maybe Ms. Gunter didn't choose a happy story for once since it isn't her normal story selection. So we went on looking for a different approach to the story and my group managed to come up with the idea that maybe the boy and his orange represent the sweet and colorful which he is, and the girl may be dark and greedy like her chocolate. We were thinking that the girl may be using the boy and the outer peelings of the orange can represent the layer of emotions blocking his view of who the girl really is.
But as we discussed together as a class with everyone involved, we realized that we were just overthinking and being biased towards the assumption that Ms. Gunter only chooses dark stories because everyone else had a more happy approach to the story and they seemed to have really revealed more about the story. I do feel like my group did have a pretty good approach to the story but we just drifted off a little bit. A main point that was brought up in the discussion, that i think was the most important, was that the girl did not want embarrass the boy when she realized that he couldn't afford the chocolate so this showed that she is a good person because even though he does not have much to give her she still stuck with him and at the end they both revealed their feelings for each other when they unwrap the chocolate and orange.
But as we discussed together as a class with everyone involved, we realized that we were just overthinking and being biased towards the assumption that Ms. Gunter only chooses dark stories because everyone else had a more happy approach to the story and they seemed to have really revealed more about the story. I do feel like my group did have a pretty good approach to the story but we just drifted off a little bit. A main point that was brought up in the discussion, that i think was the most important, was that the girl did not want embarrass the boy when she realized that he couldn't afford the chocolate so this showed that she is a good person because even though he does not have much to give her she still stuck with him and at the end they both revealed their feelings for each other when they unwrap the chocolate and orange.
Picture by LizColter.wordpress.com