"secret lion"

Symbolism is strongly used throughout the story. It is a key element of the story. It helps to give a deeper understanding of things rather than just seeing things the way they look on the surface. The author uses places like the arroyo to imply a more in depth meaning. The arroyo is a place for the boys to get away and to do what they want. It is their escape from everyone telling them what to do or not do. It is what they do there that proves this loss of innocents theme. “What we would do down there was shout every dirty word that we could think of, in every combination we could come up with, and we would yell about girls, and all the things we wanted to do with them, as loud as we could- we didn’t know what we wanted to do with them” (224). The grinding bal

Setting plays an important role of supporting the theme in this story. They loved to be outdoors and part of nature. They see nature as a beautiful and perfect thing. The arroyo and the golf course are the kids escape from school and home. At school and at home they are kept children. They have questions about things but never ask. They do not learn thing because they are taught by their teachers or their parents they learn on their own because they seeked out answers. “And we figured it must have been that way about other stuff, too, so we never said anything about anything-we weren’t stupid” (224). After they could not find the grinding ball, they stopped going to the arroyo. They were crushed when their haven happened to be a golf course. To them these places just did not seem to want them and they learned from them and grew up a little too. “Nature seemed to keep pushing us around one way or another, teaching us the same thing every place we ended up. Nature’s gang was tough that way, teaching us stuff” (225).

l is also a symbol used in the story. The ball represents childhood and how perfect every thing is and the purity of it. When they find the ball, their reaction is “GuyGogthis is perfect, thisisthis is perfect, it’s round, round and heavy, it’sit’s the best thing we’veeverseen” (224). They are so excited about this thing and they do not even know what it is. They describe it as perfect and the best thing they ever seen. That is what childhood is it is perfect and they see the grinding ball as something so important than they do not want anyone

Some topics in this essay:
Oz” Oz, Secret Lion”, Alvaro Rios, support theme, golf course, loss innocents, “the secret lion”, school home, secret lion”, “the secret, grinding ball, , objects setting, elements support theme, 224 grinding, lose innocents, 224 grinding ball,