Oranges Themes

What's love got to do with it? Well, in the case of "Oranges": everything. Despite the fruit-specific title, this poem is about love from start to finish. Soto just uses oranges to represent love,...

We find out in the poem's second line that speaker is remembering a walk he took with a girl when he was twelve. "Oranges" captures the feeling of no longer being a little kid and yet being nowhere...

In "Oranges," the speaker wants to show his girl that he's the man. He might not actually be a man yet, but he still wants to be a gentleman and impress his girl. We see the speaker testing his sha...

On the surface, "Oranges" might not seem to have much to do with sadness. But it is the thematic undercurrent of sadness that allows the speaker's love to appear so bright and intense. The young lo...