How many kinds of hurt can you name right now. In this essay I will try to convince you that I know what hurts in protagonists life. In the story It's That It Hurts by tomas rivera the protagonists soul hurts from mental and physical hurt because of bad self esteem, racism, and confusion.

One reason why his soul hurts is because of confusion. In the story he is very torn because he doesn't know whether he was expelled from the school because of a fight there is evidence of him going back and forth saying “maybe I was maybe I wasn't” over and over again at the very end he says “what if I really wasnt expelled? Maybe I wasn't No Yeah” this leads me to believe that he is very confused on where his heart is
Another reason why I believe his soul hurts is because of his self esteem. Near the middle of the story the way the author writes changes and it starts giving clues that the protagonist does not believe in himself and he has a very low self esteem. A reason why I believe this is because in the story you find him sitting in a graveyard saying how peaceful and wonderful it is. This piece of evidence pushes me towards the feeling that he is depressed and mainly because he has such a low self esteem.

A final reason that i believe his soul hurts is because of the racism at his school, I think this ties into the self esteem because racism can cause low self esteem. There is direct evidence of another student being racist to the protagonist the student says “Hey mex I don't like mexicans because the steal. You hear me?” this is proof that there is racism at his school and it really hurt the protagonist.

In conclusion I think that his soul is what is hurting because of racism, depression, confusion, and low self esteem. All of these connect because racism leads to confusion and confusion leads to low self esteem and low self esteem leads to depression which leads to the protagonist being isolated and having a very hurt soul.