An old saying that many people know of or have heard something akin to it is “There is always a beam of light that will lead you out of the dark”. All throughout history, human beings were taught that even though life is full of pain and strife, they must never lose hope . In “Salvador Late or Early”, Sandra Cisneros uses imagery to convey hope in a despairing situation.
The first noticeable theme of despair in the story is poverty, going into detail to describe the poor conditions Salvador lives with/in. Cisneros details, “...runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather, lives behind a raw wood doorway…” From this, it is easy for the reader to assume that Salvador lives in poverty by indicating…show more content… Cisneros writes, “Salvador, whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friends…” From this sentence alone, it is quite easy to see what Salvador’s life is like. The reader can analyze from the text that Salvador is a lonely boy who is so inconspicuous that not even his own teacher could remember his name. He has no friends, and his brothers are probably the only ones he spends much of his time playing with. In both pieces of text, Cisneros states “...shakes the sleepy brothers awake, tie their shoes, combs their hair...feeds them milk and corn flakes…” and “Helps his mama, who is busy with the business of the baby.” The author then goes into more details about Salvador’s responsibilities of taking care of his younger brothers because his mother is busy taking care of the baby. Throughout the entire story, it is quite noticeable that there is a lack of the presence of the father. It is easy to assume that Salvador may not have a father (who may or may not have died or left the family), and his mother is a single mother raising her children by herself. However, even the mother’s presence is not prominent in her sons’ lives as she is only mentioned once. It is clearly implied that Salvador is the one who mostly takes cares of his younger brothers and might be seen as the parental figure, making the reader question how often the mother
