Analysis Of Seventh Grade By Gary Soto

In the short story “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, the protagonist, Victor has a crush on a girl named Teresa. Teresa was in Victor's French class. The main conflict was that Victor truly wanted to date Teresa, but he didn’t know how to ask her. Although Victor didn’t know French, he put his hand up when the teacher asked if anyone knew French. He did it so that maybe Teresa would notice him. The lesson that Victor learned was to not lie. He was greatly embarrassed when the teacher put him on the spot. As we go through the story, the plot twists and turns and we see different characteristics shine from Victor. We saw him change from the beginning to the end, he went from confident, to foolish, to humble.

At the beginning of the story, the exposition, Victor was confident because he thought this year was going to be normal. We learn that Victor feels very confident in his thoughts and actions towards girls. As we see on page 1 the text states that Victor says, “Teresa is going to be my girl this year.” Gary further explains stating, “He scowled with greater conviction.” The first piece of textual evidence states that Victor thinks that Teresa is doubtlessly going to be his girl with no argument. This shows that …show more content…
We learn that Victor was embarrassed and mad at himself that he didn’t even dare to glance at Teresa. On page 4 it says, “Victor was too weak from failure to join the class”, then later the text states on page 5, “Victor couldn’t stand to look at Teresa. He was sweaty with shame.” The first text shows that Victor was embarrassed too much to even continue with class. He was humble because he was too ashamed to join the class. The second piece of evidence explains how he couldn’t even look at Teresa because he was shameful. Unlike the beginning when Victor couldn’t stop watching Teresa, he couldn’t even glance at