The House On Mango Street Essay

Secure and comforting or strict and oppressive, the idea of home can greatly influence the emotions, dreams, and worldviews of literary characters. Different parts of the home setting can be used symbolically to represent a character’s struggles and even an aspect of a character’s personality. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros are two stories that employ a home setting to achieve their meaning. Laura, a central character in The Glass Menagerie, is confined to her home by a fear of the outside world. Esperanza, the main character in The House on Mango Street, aspires to escape the cycle of poverty and brokenness in her home, but her family’s economic situation prevents her from doing so. While these two works of literature view the

When Esperanza moves in, her neighbor tells her that their family is going to move away because “the neighborhood is getting bad” (13). This implies that Esperanza’s family moving in is part of what is making the neighborhood bad. As more and more people make underhanded comments about where Esperanza lives, she becomes determined to distance herself from Mango Street. When her teacher asks her where she lives, the teacher assumes that Esperanza comes from the most rundown apartment in the area and thus furthers Esperanza’s hatred of the way that she is perceived.

Annie O. Eysturoy in “House Symbolism in The House on Mango Street” discusses the idea that many parts of the setting described by Esperanza are a representation of her. The house makes her oppressive socioeconomic situation very apparent. Eysturoy also notes that at the beginning of The House on Mango Street Esperanza refers to we. “ We didn’t always live on Mango Street” (3). “It’s not the house we thought we’d get” (3). Eventually, as her discontent grows, Esperanza begins to talk in terms of I. “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house”