Viramontes introduces the character of Estrella as an angry, frustrated, foreign student who feels that the teachers don’t care about her learning and only see the dirty appearance of Estrella and don’t look at the real potential of her. Viramontes then introduces the character of Perfecto, who takes the time to actually pay attention and teach Estrella in his own unique way. The author uses symbolism and selection of detail to show the change of Estrella from a frustrated girl who can’t seem to figure things out to a person at the end of the story who began to understand and realize how essential it was to understand English.
Viramontes uses symbolism to show the change in Estrella throughout the story. For example at the beginning of the story the author portrays Estrella as a frustrated student who just can’t seem to grasp the complicated language of English and it seems as if the teachers won’t seem to help her out. The first use of symbolism the author uses would be the red tool chest which Estrella describes as containing “funny shaped tools” when she first discovers the tool chest she is frustrated by it because it just added to the list of things that she couldn’t understand. The teachers in the story which only seem to look at her outward dirty appearance and don’t look deeper to see that she is just a frustrated student who can’t understand, they symbolize the challenges in Estrella’s life that she must overcome like the fact she can’t understand English and that she is a migrant workers daughter. The author then introduces the character Perfecto which takes the time to teach Estrella in his own unique way. The author uses Perfecto as a symbol of Estrella’s “Jesus-like” figure in the story. As Jesus used parables to teach people Perfecto also used unorthodox techniques to teach Estrella the letters of the alphabet: he used the red tool chest with all the “funny shaped tools” in a way that they symbolized the alphabet and you can see the change in...