is eyed with suspicion, and a little white boy on a tricycle hounds him, reporting negatively on his every move. Although he struggles to improve his lot by taking classes at City College, Eddie is overcome by the difficulties of surviving in his environment, and he notes wryly about a Mexican friend,

"Lupita. Waitressing and cashier work is what you do if you got that name."

Eddie gets little support from family. His father is dead, and his mother, who, in her self-absorption, cares little about him, lives with her sister in a nearby town. Eddie appeals to her for money sometimes to help him get by, but she does not readily give him much, and when she does, she wants him to spend it on things like coffee, so that she and her sister will have some when they arrive for infrequent visits. Eddie's cousin Jesus has been killed by an unknown assailant, and Jesus's mother, Eddie's nina, pressures Eddie to continue the cycle of violence and revenge by finding and taking out his killer. Eddie wants only to escape the gang lifestyle, but his aunt is persistent, badgering him with appeals to his sense of respect and "honor," and even supplying him with a gun.

Although hardship, as represented by Eddie's imagined "buried onion," is endemic to his own people, it also afflicts the white population, who appear to have so many more opportunities and so much more material comfort and wealth. Hardship is a universal condition, and when Eddie goes into a white neighborhood, he recognizes that the residents' apparent affluence is empty. Their share of the "buried onions" is still with them, lurking beneath their tidy front yards.

In Gary Soto’s Buried Onions, the protagonist, Eddie, is actually the narrator of the story. Let’s look at how this works and how it contributes to the story’s themes.

A first-person narrator often adds intimacy and immediacy to the story. We readers get to know the thoughts and feelings of the narrator firsthand as he interacts with the world around him. In this case, Eddie tells us directly about his many hardships and struggles, and we learn right from him how he feels about surviving them all.

Indeed, Eddie is a survivor, and this is one of the story’s themes. He is also determined to try to do the right thing and not to get involved with gangs and drugs. His first-personal narrative shows the sincerity of his choices even though they are difficult to keep when everything goes wrong. Eddie tries to remain honest and hardworking even though it is tempting to give in to despair.

Eddie’s narration also gives us a look at the barrio and its struggles. This is Eddie’s home, and he is the best one to describe it, for he knows it inside and out. Yet Eddie knows that he cannot improve his life if he stays in the barrio. He has to fight against too many assumptions about what the young men of the barrio are like, and Eddie is not like them. He does not want to be, and he tells us that in his narrative. This is why he decides to leave and join the Navy, yet he learns in the end that the barrio will always be part of him.

The primary theme of the novel Buried Onions by Gary Soto is that of determinism, where characters are victims of circumstance and cannot escape their own fates. In this case, living as a Mexican American in a poor community in south Fresno is what determines the fate of our main character and narrator, Eddie. Although he does his best to stay away from drugs and crime, Eddie seems to be caught in a cycle of poverty and addiction that is near impossible to escape. He pursues an honest career but loses it when he is falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. He tries to avoid gangs and violence, but his own aunt encourages him to avenge the death of her son, Jesus. He cannot even seem to sustain a loving romantic relationship, as his focus must first be on his survival. In choosing an honest and likable character like Eddie as the narrator of this novel, Soto hammers home the message that no matter how much integrity and strength of character one possesses, one would still have to fight an uphill battle against social factors such as racial marginalization and poverty if one wants to live an honest life.