In "The Secret Lion", by Alberto Alvaro Rios many elements support the theme. The theme or main idea for "The Secret Lion" is a loss of innocents or childhood, growing up. The elements used to support this theme are symbolism, setting and the characters. The symbols take the form of objects and places. The setting of the story is also important tin proving the theme. The characters are the perfect age and personality type for proving the theme of growing up.
Symbolism is strongly used throughout the story. It is a key element of the story. It helps to give a deeper understanding of things rather than just seeing things the way they look on the surface. The author uses places like the arroyo to imply a more in depth meaning. The arroyo is a place for the boys to get away and to do what they want. It is their escape from everyone telling them what to do or not do. It is what they do there that proves this loss of innocents theme. "What we would do down there was shout every dirty word that we could think of, in every combination we could come up with, and we would yell about girls, and all the things we wanted to do with them, as loud as we could- we didn't know what we wanted to do with them" (224). The grinding ball is also a symbol used in the story. The ball represents childhood and how perfect every thing is and the purity of it. When they find the ball, their reaction is "GuyGogthis is perfect, thisisthis is perfect, it's round, round and heavy, it'sit's the best thing we'veeverseen" (224). They are so excited about this thing and they do not even know what it is. They describe it as perfect and the best thing they ever seen. That is what childhood is it is perfect and they see the grinding ball as something so important than they do not want anyone to know about it so they buried it. When they went back to dig it up again they could not find it. "We dug up the whole bank, and we never found it again (224).