26 pages • 52 minutes read
Gary SotoThe No-Guitar Blues
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Allusion
Allusions are references to things outside the text, using the audience’s cultural knowledge to create deeper meaning in the story. “The No-Guitar Blues” opens with a string of allusions that add context to Fausto’s cultural background. His reference to Los Lobos helps establish that he is Mexican American, and the fact that he’s watching them on American Bandstand indirectly shares the time period in which the story takes place. The show aired from 1952-2002, but Los Lobos performed in 1985. Fausto also characterizes his parents through allusions to Mexican conjunto artists like Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jimenez, and Little Joe and La Familia. Soto makes it clear that Fausto thinks his parents are old-fashioned, but readers who are familiar with this Mexican folk music will have another layer of understanding about who his parents are. Finally, Fausto mentions that his parents bought The Chipmunks Sing Christmas Favorites to reinforce the idea that they aren’t hip, but since this is a children’s album, the reference actually characterizes them as caring parents. Fausto’s disdain for the record shows that he is growing up and is eager to leave childhood behind.
Vernacular
Soto uses vernacular—informal language—to build Fausto’s world. Specifically, he uses Spanglish to flesh out his cultural background as Mexican American, calling Mexican dishes by their Spanish names like papas (potatoes), chorizo con huevos (sausage with eggs), empanadas (turnovers or hand pies), and tortillas. Fausto’s family also uses Spanish terms of endearment like hijo (son), creating authenticity in their familial interactions. Spanglish is absent in the scenes with Roger’s owners, who call pastries “turnovers” and call Fausto English words like “dear” and “lovely.” This vernacular shift characterizes them as culturally different from Fausto. This difference is also reinforced by them naming their dog Roger, which Fausto thinks is a strange name for a dog—he prefers names like “Bomber, Freckles, Queenie, Killer, and Zero” (Paragraph 17). While not culturally specific, these names separate Fausto’s working-class world from Fresno’s upper-class neighborhoods.
Archetype
The name Fausto is an allusion to the Faust myth or the Faustian bargain. Popularized by the plays written by Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust), Faust tells the tale of a man who sells his soul to Mephistopheles, a demon, for infinite knowledge and wealth. Dating back to 15th-century Germany, Faust is such a well-known story that Faust is an archetypal figure, a sort of stock character or typical figure that carries a set of well-known traits. Heroes, villains, and sidekicks are all examples of archetypes. A Faustian figure is someone who will make a pact with the devil for personal gain. As such, Fausto’s name foreshadows that he will act against his morals and use deceit to get the money to buy his guitar. Roger is also a humorous reference to the Faust myth, as Mephistopheles originally appears to Faust in the form of a black dog. As Faust bargains with dark forces, Soto subverts the myth by having Fausto repent in a church and donate his ill-gotten gains to the collection plate. This cleanses his soul and cancels the contract, the result of which is getting his longed-for guitarrón.
Setting
“The No-Guitar Blues” uses contrasting settings to examine class differences and deepen verisimilitude (realism) in the story. The broad setting of Fresno, California, is used as shorthand for those who are familiar with this city—in 1980, Latinos comprised 28% of the population, and 93% of that population had Mexican American heritage (“General Social and Economic Characteristics: California.” IPUMS USA). Without directly describing Fausto’s neighbors, the Fresno setting makes it clear that he lives around other Mexican Americans and is immersed in that culture. Soto reinforces this with details in Fausto’s home—his parents’ conjunto music, the traditional dishes they eat, and their use of Spanish. This setting contrasts with the wealthy home Fausto visits on the other side of town, which is described through its fancy possessions—“a television as large as the front window at home” sets up a direct contrast between this home and Fausto’s (Paragraph 24). The home’s interior reinforces Fausto’s belief that this side of town is the one with the money. While the class divide is clear, Soto creates similarities between these settings, reinforcing that they are both loving homes that house good people. Just like Fausto’s mother is always cooking, he smells “warm bread” in this home, and both homes are settings where Fausto can enjoy a delicious meal. As such, settings are both divisive and unifying elements in the text, asserting that working-class and upper-class people have more similarities than differences.
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