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Character analysis house on mango street
Character analysis the house on mango street
Character analysis the house on mango street
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Seeking Control In the poor slums of Chicago, a family living in poverty struggles to get by. In the book, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza is a twelve year old girl who lives with her family in the Windy City. She lives with her three siblings and both parents on Mango Street. Esperanza has no control over her life and family’s poverty. People who have no control over their life desperately seek change. Esperanza seeks to change her name, her home, and her destiny as a way to control her life. A name given to a person at birth is out of his or her control. Esperanza had no choice in the name she was given. Changing her name would give her some control. People always struggle to pronounce Esperanza’s name. The kids pronounce it funny and Esperanza notices “at school they say my name funny as if the …show more content…
Esperanza wishes she could change where she lives. Even though Esperanza moved to a nicer house, she still does not like the house on Mango Street. Esperanza’s parents made the house they were moving to seem luxurious. Upon arrival, Esperanza realized “the house of Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’s small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath” (4). Even though the house on Mango Street is an improvement, it is still not good enough for Esperanza. Esperanza says, “I knew I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t. the house on Mango Street isn’t it” (5). She dreams of one day having a bigger and better house. The new and improved house will be a place for others to come and stay, “some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble. Rats? They’ll ask. Bums I’ll say, and I’ll be happy” (87). Dreaming of moving to a new house not only gives Esperanza the feeling of control and independence, but makes her
Esperanza begins her journal by stating where she has been and where she has temporarily ended at. When she finally moved with her family, Esperanza immediately realizes that her place in the world was not going to be in the “small and red”
Over and over Esperanza battled with how people perceived her and how she wished to be perceived. In the beginning of the book Esperanza speaks of all the times her family has moved from one place to another. “Before that we lived on Loomis on th...
“Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without me having to explain them” (9). These are the longing words spoken by Esperanza. In the novel The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is young girl experiencing adolescence not only longing for a place to fit in but also wanting to be beautiful. This becomes complicated as Esperanza becomes more sexually aware. Throughout the novel, Cisneros argues the importance of beauty and how Esperanza deals with beauty as a part of her identity. When Esperanza meets Sally a new friend, Esperanza’s whole world is turned upside down. Esperanza’s views on beauty change from a positive outlook to a negative one by watching how beauty has damaged Sally’s life.
The plot of The House on Mango Street symbolizes an immigrant family moving to the United States in hope of a future with more opportunities. It is a story about a girl by the name of Esperanza and the retelling of the events in her childhood. Esperanza faces many challenges growing up in an underdeveloped neighborhood of inner city Chicago. Through her experiences at home, school, and with people she starts to blossom into the young woman she always wanted to be. Esperanza encounters many unjust acts as a result of living in an urban neighborhood. These encounters make her want to move to a different neighborhood because she feels like she does not belong on Mango Street. She feels trapped because she has a dream to attend college and become a writer. Her hope is that she will be able to live a prosperous American life and be able to come back to Mango Street to help those who cannot escape on their own. It is, most importantly, the story of a girl maturing into a woman an...
of people in Esperanza’s school think of him as a fool. Then when one day he says
In the vignette "a rice sandwich" Esperanza shows her embarrassment and sadness for her family's poverty. "That one? She said, pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, that even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that was not my house and started to cry." (Cisneros, 45). This quote really portrays Esperanza's sadness. Even though, Esperanza knew that was not her house she started to cry
Esperanza, the main character of The House on Mango Street, a novella written by Sandra Cisneros in 1984, has always felt like she didn’t belong. Esperanza sought a different life than the ones that people around her were living. She wanted to be in control of her life, and not be taken away by men as so many others around her had. Esperanza wanted to move away from Mango Street and find the house, and life she had always looked for. Through the use of repetition, Sandra Cisneros conveys a sense of not belonging, that can make a person strong enough to aspire to a better life.
After Cathy had left her home a new kid moved in. His name was Meme Ortiz, but that wasn’t his name, but Esperanza tells us what his actual name is. “His name isn’t really Meme. His name is Juan. But when we asked him what his name was he said Meme, and that’s what everybody calls him except his mother” (Cisneros 21). This gives us a similarity to a vignette from the earlier part of the book called “My Name” in that vignette, it tells us of how Esperanza wishes
Sandra Cisneros' strong cultural values greatly influence The House on Mango Street. Esperanza's life is the medium that Cisneros uses to bring the Latin community to her audience. The novel deals with the Catholic Church and its position in the Latin community. The deep family connection within the barrio also plays an important role in the novel. Esperanza's struggle to become a part of the world outside of Mango Street represents the desire many Chicanos have to grow beyond their neighborhoods.
At first, Esperanza is young, insecure, and immature. Her immaturity is apparent when she talks about her mom holding her, saying it is, “sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you and you feel safe” (Cisneros 6-7). This shows Esperanza’s insecurity because her mom is still a big comfort source to her. She feels a false sense of comfort because her mom is there and will protect her. In addition, Esperanza’s immaturity is shown through her dislike for outsiders of the neighborhood when she says, “They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake” (Cisneros 28). This indicates how defensive and protective Esperanza is towards her barrio by calling outsiders stupid for reacting the way they do, even though she dislikes Mango Street....
In class we read the book House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza lives in a lower working class neighborhood and street called Mango Street dealing with poverty. Her house is an important symbol in House on Mango Street. It represents Eperanza’s process of maturing as a person and the change in her perspective of poverty and struggle being shameful, to it being something to embrace and use as motivation. This is a very important part of the story because it is in many aspects where we are from that make us who we become. This is interesting to see in the book as her opinions and perspective of things inside and outside of her neighborhood are shaped by her experiences.
According to Deluzain, the meaning of a person’s name is symbol of identity of the individual and represent the history of the future life (3). Hope is what Esperanza has in her soul. Cisneros writes that Esperanza should own a proper house, and it is not the one her parents has already, actually she is waiting for something better (7). Esperanza builds an image of a passive woman, defined by the destiny in a clearly macho society. The name of Esperanza is a very positive connotation, where wait means progress, jumping obstacles, confident that the change is positive.
Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old. She lived in a one story flat that Esperanza thought was finally a "real house". Esperanza’s family was poor. Her father barely made enough money to make ends meet. Her mother, a homemaker, had no formal education because she had lacked the courage to rise above the shame of her poverty, and her escape was to quit school. Esperanza felt that she had the desire and courage to invent what she would become.
Esperanza is a determined character by working hard and dreaming a lot to make it a better situation. (When Esperanza points out that she needs money
Throughout The House on Mango Street Esperanza learns to resist the gender norms that are deeply imbedded in her community. The majority of the other female characters in the novel have internalized the male viewpoint and they believe that it is their husbands or fathers responsibility to care for them and make any crucial decisions for them. However, despite the influence of other female characters that are “immasculated”, according to Judith Fetterley, Esperanza’s experiences lead her to become a “resisting reader” in Fettereley’s terminology because she does not want to become like the women that she observes, stuck under a man’s authority. She desires to leave Mango Street and have a “home of her own” so that she will never be forced to depend on a man (Cisneros 108). During the course of the novel Esperanza eventually realizes that it is also her duty to go back to Mango Street “For the ones that cannot out”, or the women who do not challenge the norms (110). Esperanza eventually turns to her writing as a way to escape from her situation without having to marry a man that she would be forced to rely on like some of her friends do.