The Challenge, written by Gary Soto is a story about a boy named José who desperately wants to get the attention of the new girl Estela. He tries many ways to get it like doing his homework, injuring himself, and finally finding a way by playing racquetball with Estela. However, he realized Estela was not the kind of girl he had taken her for. José challenges Estela to a match, and it turns out, she is very good at racquetball, and José had lied to her that he had won tournaments. So before the match, José seeks help from his Uncle Freddie and his father. He practices but can’t get the hang of it, so he loses to her in a match twenty-one to none. He felt ashamed, embarrassed, surprised, and in pain. José tries many ways to get Estela’s attention, though regrets it later on when finding out her true personality. The match with Estela had been a challenge for him, just like when he was trying to get her attention, it was hard. Estela is a very tough character, and so José realized that he has got himself into a very difficult challenge that he had no idea how to get out of.
Gary Soto wants to show that this story has a strong significance of the problems that trouble young teenagers. Most importantly, is early attitude towards love, which means when you are nearly a teen, around José’s age, you feel like someone is interesting. This is like José’s attitude towards Estela. When he first sees her, he thinks that she is cute and wants to attract her by doing many dangerous and risky things. But this is not the way to get to girls at all. José tries everything to get to Estela, but after he succeeded in one option, playing racquetball with Estela, he realised that this was difficult. This is one of the difficulties in José’s life, as he tried everything to get to Estela, but then realising that this had become a very big problem as he couldn’t win, and also because he spent so much time. Love is very difficult to deal with, especially with teenagers, because they don’t tend to control themselves or listen to other people’s suggestions. José and Estela show a very good example of young adult behaviours, and the maturity of people when they soon understand what’s right and what’s wrong.
José shows a very disturbing and hidden attitude towards other genders in this story. This type of behaviour is called gender discrimination, and it has been the reason why José lost to Estela, as well. José doesn’t try hard to train at all, and depicts Estela because she is a girl. However, this is the reason he loses to her during the racquetball match too. He thought that all girls were weak and should be beaten by boys any sports, which is why he asked father if a girl had ever beaten him, this way he knows that girls are weak or not. When the answer from father is no, he began to loosen up and lost. Also, in the text, he showed jeering in his mind at females, as said; ““I’ll learn,” José said. “In one day? Get serious.” “It’s against a girl.”” The words ‘It’s against a girl” shows that he does not believe that a girl, like Estela, could beat him because he is a boy, and she is a girl. Estela seems very weak just because she is female to José, no matter how tough he thinks she is, she will always only be weak like a girl should be in José’s mind. Gender discrimination is not right, and it will always lead to bad endings.
In this story, Gary Soto uses irony to describe how no matter what José tries to do, it always has a bad result. Whether it is impressing Estela or playing racquetball with her, he never seems to have a good ending. After 5 attempts at impressing Estela, he got what he wanted, though the 5 attempts did not have a good ending. Same with racquetball, he had 21 tries and in each of them, he never hit the ball once. He either hit the ball too early, too late, hit his kneecap, miss the ball, or swing his racket away. This is what Gary Soto wants to show, the irony of how he can never do anything good. Even if José tried to learn from what he did wrong and tried to hit the ball for once, luck never came to him no matter how hard he tries. This is ironic because it shows that José is not lucky, and he is very unfortunate indeed. Gary Soto puts this in because he wants to show that José is not fortunate and he won't ever impress anyone, or win anything because of his attitude. José tries again and again to win the match or impress Estela, and again and again, bad luck comes to him.
In this story, José underestimated females and showed the effects of young adult development in personal life and situations. José shows that these things can be all changed, while they all sourced from one problem in life. This is a young teenager’s difficulties in life. José thinks that Estela is interesting, so he tries hard to attract her and make her notice him. He uses all kinds of ideas that are either ridiculous, dangerous, or ridiculously dangerous. And all of this that had gone through was only for someone to notice him. All these risks that he made couldn't be more valuable than just someone seeing you. However, things were what José wanted, for Estela to notice him. He succeeded, but things didn't turn out to be what he thought would be. When he lost at the racquetball challenge, he felt as if he was a loser. But we can neither let this stop us, we should figure out how to solve this problem, not just act without thinking. José gives us the strong lesson that we should face the area if teen development positively through obstacles in life, and fix your problems through it.
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