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Plum Plum Pickers Final Draft

The document analyzes Raymond Barrio's excerpt from "Plum Plum Pickers" about the life of a migrant worker. It discusses how Barrio uses inhumane imagery, short choppy syntax, and changing tones to depict the character struggling to maintain his humanity. The imagery makes the character seem like a vicious animal through word choices like "blackest bar" and "animal". Short choppy sentences give a sense that his day is endless yet fast. Shifting tones between words like "beast" and "savage" convey how trapped and hopeless the character feels.

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49 views3 pages

Plum Plum Pickers Final Draft

The document analyzes Raymond Barrio's excerpt from "Plum Plum Pickers" about the life of a migrant worker. It discusses how Barrio uses inhumane imagery, short choppy syntax, and changing tones to depict the character struggling to maintain his humanity. The imagery makes the character seem like a vicious animal through word choices like "blackest bar" and "animal". Short choppy sentences give a sense that his day is endless yet fast. Shifting tones between words like "beast" and "savage" convey how trapped and hopeless the character feels.

Uploaded by

api-358181114
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Pashales 1

Pashales, John

English 10 Pre-AP

Klimas

3 October 2017

Plum Plum Pickers Analysis

Raymond Barrio’s excerpt from Plum Plum Pickers depicts the life of a migrant worker

struggling to maintain his humanity. Barrio’s use of inhumane imagery, short, choppy syntax,

and changing tones creates a moment of epiphany in one man’s life.

The imagery created by the use of diction gives the illusion that Barrio is not talking

about a human but rather a vicious animal that is not capable of acting like a human and needs to

be locked up, which could be characterized as inhumane. By using words that correlate to animal

behavior, he is able to create this illusion, Barrio writes, “Just like the blackest bar on the jails of

hell. There had to be an end. There had to be. There-trapped. There had to be a way out. Locked.

There had to be a respite. Animal”(Barrio). By using this type of diction, Barrio is able to draw

in the reader with this image of an animal being locked in a cell that may never be opened, which

is how the character is trying to convey. “Blackest bar on the jails of hell” is using a color to

fully explain how dark it feels to be an immigrant picker in his position, and allows the audience

to subconsciously comprehend that in his heart he is empty and dark and is nothing but a

humanless being that does work that he is not completely compensated for. The imagery that is

created with the author's diction and other devices like syntax allow the reader to see and

comprehend how the character is feeling.

The syntax that is used in Plum Plum Pickers is short and choppy sentences. Barrio

writes, “Then up again. The trees. The branches again. The briarly branches. The scratching
Pashales 2

leaves. The twigs tearing at his shirt sleeves. The ladder. The rough bark”(Barrio). By using

these short, choppy sentences, Barrio can create the illusion that everything the character does is

almost robotic and everything that happens, happens so fast and ends so abruptly almost like it

didn’t happen, but it did. By using this type of syntax, Barrio can also use these short, one or two

word sentences to describe how the day seems to be endless yet so fast. This can also be

observed when describing the contratista Roberto Morales, “His feet straddled. Mexican style. A

real robber. A Mexican general. A gentlemanly, friendly, polite, grinning, vicious thieving brute.

The worst kind”(Barrio). By using short and choppy sentences to describe Morales, Barrio can

jump from one aspect to the next of Morales’s features, which allows the reader to see all of the

aspects that are related to Morales.

There is not one tone that could describe this whole passage. There are many tones that

one could come to the conclusion of. Some of the many tones that could be concluded to are

barbaric, wretched, outraged, or indignant. Written by Barrio, the passage says, ”Beast … savage

… brute … animal … endlessly unending … slow motion … crude … ignorant …

grime”(Barrio). The diction that Barrio decides to use creates tones that show how not only the

main character feels but everyone in the apricot field feels, and this alludes more to the topic of

how the character feels trapped and how everything moves more slowly. The tone also allows

Barrio to precisely describe situations and how they are supposed to be felt by the audience.

Barrio’s message is to convey how hopeless the main character feels and how trapped he also

feels.

Plum Plum Pickers depicts the life of a migrant worker struggling to maintain his

humanity and by using inhuman imagery, short, choppy syntax, and changing tones. All of these
Pashales 3

aspects come together to show the inhumanity felt by the main character, and also depict the

long, and dark the apricot pickers life really is.

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