I read a book by Gary Soto called the Afterlife and it was very interesting. I wrote a summary for school for it and this is how it goes:
As a child you make many choices, but as usual every choice leads to a consequence. In the book “The Afterlife” by Gary Soto when you die that is not always the end. For some people they believe that you go somewhere else. People do not always have a choice. But then later on you see mistakes you have made, meaning choices that bring on certain consequences. These consequences may lead up to an ending factor causing pain not only for yourself, but the ones around you.
Chuy, the main character in the story was in the bathroom looking at himself in the mirror, combing his hair trying to make himself look better for a certain girl. Soon a guy came into the club bathroom. It was a choice Chuy made to compliment the guys’ shoes. The guy was wearing yellow shoes. Chuy said, “I like your shoes.” The guy said, “What ‘d you say ‘cabron?” and then Chuy was laying on the floor gasping for breath resulting from the 3 body stabs he received. From that choice Chuy made he did not know the consequence. But, in this case by complimenting someone’s shoes—being nice is not always the answer.
After Chuy was stabbed his spirit left his body and he began to float up through the ceiling. As he was floating he wanted to grip something to keep him close to his body. But he kept moving up. He noticed a couple of things happening. Chuy even noticed that there were sirens wailing for his dead body on the bathroom floor. He imagined what his buddy Angel and him would do, if they could see each other. Chuy soon found out that he could not pick anything up and he would move in the direction of the wind.
Later on in the story Chuy notices not just one person wears that yellow shoe style. He saw another person, a bigger chubby guy wearing the yellow shoes. Chuy wondered if it may have been a type of new style for gangbangers. The guy he was watching went to tried to steal a car. Chuy attacked the guy. The guy was so scared he ran off farting. Chuy had discovered his power a while back with a police officer when he shoved his hand through the policeman’s body to his heart. He learned that he could make people feel his presence with the coldness of death. He even healed a man of sickness.
Chuy soon began to disappear one body part after another. He soon finds a girl named Crystal who he met a long time ago working on her father’s farm. He found her ghost as he was walking around in his town. Chuy found our that Crystal killed herself taking pills because she could not take any more pressure. She had 2 boyfriends, Jason and Eric. And on top of that she was a cheerleader so that must have made her very popular. During the time Chuy spent with her they went over their past at the farm. That is when I believe that he showed his true love for her.
In the end I would say in “The Afterlife” you have time to exlore your last days on earth. In those last days you see how the choices you’ve made when you were alive caused certain consequences. And now you can only watch people’s lives go by as you hang in the balance of the afterlife.
—–Have you read this book? Check it out at your local Barnes and Nobel or Public Library
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