The Afterlife

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Soto, Gary. 2003. THE AFTERLIFE. Orlando: Harcourt. ISBN 9780152047740

PLOT SUMMARY

 As so many wonder about the afterlife, this book focuses on Chuy and what happens to him when he dies. A boy in his teenage years. Full of curiosity and daring, he concentrates on a girl. A girl he wants to dance with, but within the first couple of pages, Chuy, meets his untimely death.  The situation happened to take place in a nightclub. As a matter of fact, in the restroom. He was stabbed and died.  Chuy experiences his spirit is left in limbo.  As the breeze takes his spirit around town, he visits friends and enemies alike.  His body begins to fade limb by limb, so he hurries quickly and moves. He comes across a football game and falls in love with the ghost of a suicide victim.  As he visits everyone, he learns to forgive his friends and is able to understand people better. Yet, in the end, he understands that he is living his life in death which should have been best done while he was alive.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Gary Soto’s first pages grab readers' attention with “The Afterlife”. The novel begins with violence and the cruel realities that the main character, Chuy, lives in his neighborhood located in California.  Soto’s writing is harsh and blunt but it is authentic. The book encourages the reader to keep going and read the book from beginning to end.  The main character, Chuy, is a young Latino teenager who can be described as his style is full of mixed languages which further represents the culture of many Latin males.

 Chuy’s world represents imagery that is violent and harsh which is represented in his death at a nightclub.  His love is a perfect example as he falls in love with the ghost of a suicide victim.  A representation of how sad and frail Chuy’s afterlife is while he drifts around the city trying to understand individuals and the life he suddenly exited from.  As the reader goes on, he or she begins to see Chuy mature.  Chuy starts to care about the violence and tries to stop it. In a crime-ridden city, the main character remains diverse and different and realizes that he should have lived to practice what he just learned at a ghost.

Soto’s words in the book flow as he adds Spanish to an English story. Bilingual readers do not have to stop to translate compared to monolingual readers who would have to read the context clues in order to fully understand the sentence. While life is ultimately fragile, The Afterlife is a story about the difficulties in saying goodbye.

REVIEW EXCERPTS

“Soto’s simple and poetic language, leavened with Mexican Spanish with such care to context that the appended glossary is scarcely needed, is clear, but Chuy’s ultimate destiny isn’t.” (School Library Journal

 “Soto has remade OUR TOWN into Fresno, California, and he not only paints the scenery brilliantly but also captures the pain that follows an early death. In many ways, this is as much a story about a hardscrabble place as it is about a boy who is murdered. Both pulse with life and will stay in memory.” (Booklist, starred review)

 “Soto writes with a touch as light as Chuy’s ghost and with humor, wonderment, and generosity toward life.” (Kirkus Reviews)

CONNECTIONS

 Analyze the following pieces. Make a chart that compares the emotions of the protagonists and themes:

• OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder. ISBN 9780380005574
• A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens 9781932732009

• Other books by Gary Soto

• BASEBALL IN APRIL AND OTHER STORIES. Gary Soto. ISBN 9780152025670
• A SUMMER LIFE. Gary Soto. ISBN 9780440210245
• LIVING UP THE STREET. Gary Soto. ISBN 978-0440211709