ACTIVITY

Name and Period ______________________________

Analyzing Narratives 1.6
Learning Strategies
Learning Targets
• Analyze the author’s use of descriptive language in a personal narrative Paraphrasing
and its effect on the reader. Close Reading
Marking the Text
Preview Graphic Organizer
In this activity, you will read a personal narrative and analyze how the Note-taking
author uses simile and metaphor.

LITERARY

VOCABULARY
Descriptive Language The most common examples
Writers use descriptive language, such as figurative language (including metaphor of figurative language are
and simile), vivid verbs, and sensory language, to add interest, detail, and voice to metaphor and simile. A
their writing. If you are unsure about the meaning of these terms, look them up in simile compares two unlike
the glossary of this book or in a dictionary. things using words such as
like or as. His music is like a
Setting a Purpose for Reading fast trip on a roller coaster.
A metaphor compares two
• Underline words and phrases that describe the narrator’s feelings. Then use the
unlike things without using
My Notes section to describe any time you have felt similar emotions.
the words like or as. Often
• Circle unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words a form of to be is used. Her
by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary. music is a trip to the streets
of Memphis.
About the Author
Gary Soto (1952–) grew up in Fresno, California.
In many of his stories, Soto writes about My Notes
the experiences of growing up as a Mexican
American in the barrio, a Spanish-speaking
neighborhood. While his stories draw on his own
experiences and cultural heritage, the themes of
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his stories often relate to the experiences many

young people face. His poems, short stories, and
novels have won numerous awards and prizes.

Personal Narrative

The Jacket
by Gary Soto

1 My clothes have failed me. I remember the green coat that I wore in fifth
and sixth grades when you either danced like a champ or pressed yourself
against a greasy wall, bitter as a penny toward the happy couples.
2 When I needed a new jacket and my mother asked what kind I wanted,
I described something like bikers wear: black leather and silver studs, with
enough belts to hold down a small town. We were in the kitchen, steam on the

Unit 1 • Stories of Change 39

 1.6
My Notes windows from her cooking. She listened so long while stirring dinner that I
thought she understood for sure the kind I wanted. The next day when I got
home from school, I discovered draped on my bedpost a jacket the color of
day-old guacamole. I threw my books on the bed and approached the jacket
slowly, as if it were a stranger whose hand I had to shake. I touched the vinyl
sleeve, the collar, and peeked at the mustard-colored lining.
3 From the kitchen mother yelled that my jacket was in the closet. I closed
the door to her voice and pulled at the rack of clothes in the closet, hoping
the jacket on the bedpost wasn’t for me but my mean brother. No luck. I gave
up. From my bed, I stared at the jacket. I wanted to cry because it was so ugly
and so big that I knew I’d have to wear it a long time. I was a small kid, thin
as a young tree, and it would be years before I’d have a new one. I stared at
the jacket, like an enemy, thinking bad things before I took off my old jacket,
whose sleeves climbed halfway to my elbow.
4 I put the big jacket on. I zipped it up and down several times, and rolled
the cuffs up so they didn’t cover my hands. I put my hands in the pockets and
flapped the jacket like a bird’s wings. I stood in front of the mirror, full face,
then profile, and then looked over my shoulder as if someone had called me. I
sat on the bed, stood against the bed, and combed my hair to see what I would
look like doing something natural. I looked ugly. I threw it on my brother’s
bed and looked at it for a long time before I slipped it on and went out to the
backyard, smiling a “thank you” to my mom as I passed her in the kitchen.
With my hands in my pockets I kicked a ball against the fence, and then
climbed it to sit looking into the alley. I hurled orange peels at the mouth of an
open garbage can, and when the peels were gone I watched the white puffs of
my breath thin to nothing.
5 I jumped down, hands in my pockets, and in the backyard, on my knees,
I teased my dog, Brownie, by swooping my arms while making birdcalls. He

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jumped at me and missed. He jumped again and again, until a tooth sunk deep,
ripping an L-shaped tear on my left sleeve. I pushed Brownie away to study the
tear as I would a cut on my arm. There was no blood, only a few loose pieces
of fuzz. Damn dog, I thought, and pushed him away hard when he tried to bite
again. I got up from my knees and went to my bedroom to sit with my jacket
on my lap, with the lights out.
6 That was the first afternoon with my new jacket. The next day I wore it
to sixth grade and got a D on a math quiz. During the morning recess Frankie
T., the playground terrorist, pushed me to the ground and told me to stay there
until recess was over. My best friend, Steve Negrete, ate an apple while looking
at me, and the girls turned away to whisper on the monkey bars. The teachers
were no help: they looked my way and talked about how foolish I looked in
my new jacket. I saw their heads bob with laughter, their hands half covering
their mouths.

vinyl: a type of plastic

40 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6

 1.6
7 Even though it was cold, I took off the jacket during lunch and played My Notes
kickball in a thin shirt, my arms feeling like braille from goose bumps. But
when I returned to class I slipped the jacket on and shivered until I was warm.
I sat on my hands, heating them up, while my teeth chattered like a cup of
crooked dice. Finally warm, I slid out of the jacket but put it back on a few
minutes later when the fire bell rang. We paraded out into the yard where we,
the sixth graders, walked past all the other grades to stand against the back
fence. Everybody saw me. Although they didn’t say out loud, “Man, that’s
ugly,” I heard the buzz-buzz of gossip and even laughter that I knew was meant
for me.
8 And so I went, in my guacamole-colored jacket. So embarrassed, so hurt,
I couldn’t even do my homework. I received C’s on quizzes and forgot the state
capitals and the rivers of South America, our friendly neighbor. Even the girls
who had been friendly blew away like loose flowers to follow the boys in neat
jackets.
9 I wore that thing for three years until the sleeves grew short and my
forearms stuck out like the necks of turtles. All during that time no love came
to me—no little dark girl in a Sunday dress she wore on Monday. At lunchtime
I stayed with the ugly boys who leaned against the chainlink fence and looked
around with propellers of grass spinning in our mouths. We saw girls walk
by alone, saw couples, hand in hand, their heads like bookends pressing air
together. We saw them and spun our propellers so fast our faces were blurs.
10 I blame that jacket for those bad years. I blame my mother for her bad
taste and her cheap ways. It was a sad time for the heart. With a friend I spent
my sixth-grade year in a tree in the alley, waiting for something good to
happen to me in that jacket, which had become the ugly brother who tagged
along wherever I went. And it was about that time that I began to grow. My
chest puffed up with muscle and, strangely, a few more ribs. Even my hands,
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those fleshy hammers, showed bravely through the cuffs, the fingers already
hardening for the coming fights. 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, but in rain or cold weather the tape peeled off
like a scab and more stuffing fell out until that sleeve shriveled into a palsied
arm. That winter the elbows began to crack and whole chunks of green began
to fall off. I showed the cracks to my mother, who always seemed to be at the
stove with steamed-up glasses, and she said that there were children in Mexico
who would love that jacket. I told her that this was America and yelled that
braille: a system of writing
Debbie, my sister, didn’t have a jacket like mine. I ran outside, ready to cry, and for blind people that uses
climbed the tree by the alley to think bad thoughts and watch my breath puff raised dots
white and disappear. propellers: fanlike objects with
turning blades
11 But whole pieces still casually flew off my jacket when I played hard, read
palsied: shaking uncontrollably
quietly, or took vicious spelling tests at school. When it became so spotted because of an illness
that my brother began to call me “camouflage,” I flung it over the fence into vicious: cruel and dangerous
the alley. Later, however, I swiped the jacket off the ground and went inside to mope: feel aimless and unhappy
drape it across my lap and mope.

Unit 1 • Stories of Change 41

 1.6
12 I was called to dinner: steam silvered my mother’s glasses as she said grace; my brother
and sister with their heads bowed made ugly faces at their glasses of powdered milk. I gagged
too, but eagerly ate big rips of buttered tortilla that held scooped-up beans. Finished, I went
outside with my jacket across my arm. It was a cold sky. The faces of clouds were piled up,
hurting. I climbed the fence, jumping down with a grunt. I started up the alley and soon
slipped into my jacket, that green ugly brother who breathed over my shoulder that day and
ever since.

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Making Observations
• What do you notice about the setting of the story?
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• Which details about the jacket are important?
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• What feelings does the narrator have about the jacket?

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Returning to the Text
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• Return to the text as you respond to the following questions. Use text evidence to support
your responses.
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• Write any additional questions you have about the story in your Reader/Writer Notebook.
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1. What mood does the first sentence set up?
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2. What is the point of view of this text? How does writing the story from this point of view help

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develop the plot?
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3. What is one example of personification in the story? What is the mood it creates?
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42 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6