The school setting from Galarza's Barrio Boy shapes the narrator's understanding of what it means to be american. Because Ernesto sees that children from many cultures are in the class, he learns that Americans are diverse. This relates to the main theme of the story, which is the immigrant's experience with all of its feelings, through the eyes of a young boy.
When Ernesto starts school in America he is opened to a new experience of multiculturalism in which he needs to finds his own place and voice, and where he learns that "to be American" means diverse things to different people.
Steinbeck uses the colour red to symbolise that the wife is attention seeking as red has conations of boldness. On the contrary it also symbolises that she might be a danger as red can also have connotations of death and danger this might foreshadow future events
