Small Steps Literary Elements

Young adult fiction

Austin, Texas; three months after Armpit's return from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correction Facility

An unnamed, third-person omniscient narrator.

The tone is emotional; the mood is dramatic.

Armpit is the protagonist and El Genius is the antagonist.

The major conflict of the novel is that Armpit wants to redeem himself and avoid recidivism but ends up in situations that could lead to him returning to prison when he gets swept up in the life of Kaira DeLeon.

The climax of the story begins when El Genius enters Kaira DeLeon's hotel suite while she is showering before her show in San Francisco. Fred has been looking for her everywhere and Armpit is entering the hotel after walking back from Chinatown after a blowup with Kaira. El Genius has murder weapons with Armpit's fingerprints on them and has planted evidence in his room. Once Kaira comes out of the shower, El Genius hits her in the throat with a baseball bat. He continues striking her until Fred comes in and lunges at him. El Genius stabs Fred with the fruit-and-cheese knife from Armpit's hotel room, and Kaira is unable to scream out for help. Just as El Genius is about to deliver a fatal blow to Kaira, Armpit enters the room but begins to leave because Kaira isn't responding. Kaira musters all her strength to use a coil to send her lamp crashing against the hotel floor to get Armpit's attention. Armpit finds El Genius and beats him until he's motionless.

The life-changing meeting of Armpit and Kaira is foreshadowed through the motif of Kaira's music. When Armpit is selling tickets to the Kaira DeLeon concert and driving Ginny to the concert, music plays which foreshadows their meeting. The lyrics ask him to wait a little bit longer because she's coming, and that his life will no longer be the same once she comes into his life.

El Genius is called a "control freak," but this is an understatement. El Genius is an egomaniac who has been helping Aileen embezzle millions of dollars from Kaira's trust fund. Further, he's plotting to murder Kaira and frame her boyfriend in order to prevent her from firing him once she turns eighteen.

Armpit speaking about taking small steps or having taken too big a step alludes to the advice he received at the halfway house once he was released from Camp Green Lake. The counselor advised him to take small steps to avoid recidivism. The consistent allusion to this advice supports the theme of redemption and it being Armpit's primary motivation upon returning to Austin.

The imagery of the hotel Armpit stays at in San Francisco creates a tone of awe. Armpit feels like he's in another world, and Sachar's use of imagery illustrates Armpit's wide-eyed amazement at the luxurious world he's entered because of Kaira. Sachar also uses imagery in the rising action to highlight and foreshadow their importance, as well as during the climax to build interest.

While Armpit is fixated on the advice to take small steps, it is the big step he takes to drop everything and go to California which serves as the best teacher. Because of his saving Kaira DeLeon, he's dubbed a hero across the country. This counters what the counselor said—that everyone would assume the worst of him after returning from prison and that taking small steps is the only way to avoid returning downstream. Armpit is surprised that people around him believe that the situation with Kaira isn't his fault, and it's this situation that allows people to see Armpit for who he truly is.

In Kaira's first song release after she recovers her voice, she sings an ode to Armpit through singing about taking Small Steps.
"But I'm taking small steps,
'Cause I don't know where I'm going.
I'm taking small steps
And I don't know what to say."
The repetition of the structure of her song mimics the structure of taking small steps. She sings this refrain twice, similar to how Armpit sets his goal of small steps to take in Austin twice: after returning from Camp Green Lake and after returning from California.

X-Ray referring to the H-E-B parking lot as "H-E-B" is an example of synecdoche.

Armpit and Ginny personify Coo, Ginny's stuffed animal she's had since birth, as being brave and able to help those around it be brave too. This highlights Ginny's youth and serves as a symbol for Ginny when Armpit is on his way to his speech class and giving his "leader of the world" speech. When he tries to think about Coo, he ends up speaking about Ginny.