Salvador Late or Early by Sandra Cisneros

In the short story “Salvador Late or Early”, by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros uniquely describes the main character Salvador. She uses detail, imagery, and diction to characterize Salvador in her short story. When she was describing Salvador, she makes it very simple to recognize the advance detail put in. In the first sentence, she stuffs and fills it with details, details, details, but also leaves you wanting to read more and more, leaving a complete description half empty, but full enough to question and want more.

She narrates the passage, and tells the reader about Salvador’s eyes being the “color of caterpillar”. First, it makes you think, and even start to draw a picture of what it might look like in your head. Then she speaks, as if she is a bad conscience, a mean and almost bully like, and says that Salvador is a “boy who is no one’s friend”. Harsh much? She talks about how sad of a life he is having and puts details enough to make you have a deep emotion. Cisneros characterizes Salvador her best as she writes in great imagery.

She states that he is of “crooked hair and crooked teeth”, “crooked hair”? Is she implying that his hair looks curly? Not well kept? Slept on wrong? All a reader can do is just imagine… imagine a picture, maybe even pictures a couple of what he may look like. She then tells of where he lives; “behind a raw wood doorway”, and ends her imagery “faze” with a description of what his outer body is seen. He is seen as a “forty-pound body of boy”, but, yet, no one knows of his age, or height, but if a reader were to guess, he sounds like a scrawny boy. He might be scrawny because of where he lives.

When Cisneros says a “raw… doorway”, is she implying a bad looking one, or good looking one. It could go either way, but it just depend on how the reader ‘imagines’ it. Lastly, she ties together the story using diction. Cisneros, says Salvador “helps his mama”, implying that he probably doesn’t have a father at home helping the mother, which is why he has to help. She then ties all the loose ends up, and says that the mother is “busy with the business of the baby”, usually if a woman is to have a mans child, they stay with the mother helping them to raise the baby together as a ‘couple’.

Not in this case. Later she describes his wardrobe/appearance, which is a “wrinkled shirt”. She describes his shirt with great diction. When she says “wrinkled” it could be implying that he had no time to iron his shirt because he has to help his mother out with his siblings, or implying that he doesn’t own one. In Sandra Cisneros’s short story, “Salvador Late or Early”, she takes her sharp skills, and makes an original way to describe her characters and makes it a captivating short story, making readers want to read more.