Esperanza Rising is a story about a girl named Esperanza Ortega. The story takes place in the 1930’s where she lived with her family in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Esperanza and her mother secretly decided to move to California after some tragic events happened and escape the fate of her mother having to marry Esperanza’s Tio Luis. She faces many different life changing experiences in this story such as dealing with the loss of a family member, learning the value and importance of hard work, and how everyday living changes affect her outlook on people and life. Throughout her transition from Mexico to the U.S., Esperanza goes from riches to rags and learns many valuable lessons.
Esperanza grew up very wealthy in a big house with servants. She was spoiled and never had to lift a finger. She had a close relationship with her father. Esperanza had a collection of dolls he would give her every year on her birthday. Esperanza had everything she could wish for. Everything was in order like her dolls lined up on her dresser. Then tragedy hit when Esperanza’s father died. His death affected everyone, especially Esperanza. Life
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as she knew it changed from this day forward. She has grown from this experience by becoming more humble and mature. She realized her uncles were devious and dangerous men. They threatened to make life terrible for Ramona and Esperanza because Ramona refused Tio Luis’ proposal of marriage and to buy their home. Esperanza learns that he only wants to marry her mother because she has influence on people and this would help him become elected as governor. Esperanza learned that her uncles wanted the power that her father had. They are not good men with good intentions as her father was. Once they escaped, they came to California hoping for a better and easier life. Esperanza quickly learned that her lifestyle was going to change in many ways. She has grown from these experiences by learning the strategies of hard work. In Mexico, she had servants who did everything for her, now she has to work hard for everything she has. Before, she felt she was above everybody, but now she is among those very same people. Also, Esperanza is used to having lots of space in her home and her own bedroom, now she lives in a small cabin with 3 other people struggling for space. Esperanza was only 13 years old and had to deal with so many life changing experiences in a very short time. She grew from this experience because she learned skills such as cooking, cleaning,and babysitting.Not knowing the first thing about cooking or cleaning, she found it rather challenging to do the simplest of chores. While babysitting the twins, she fell asleep. When Esperanza woke, she realized the mess they made, which she then had to clean up, also burning her first pot of beans. These chores were so much pressure on her because she wasn't used to workings or taking care of children. Esperanza had to ask Isabel to teach her how to do housework and how to wash clothes. Esperanza finally realized how hard her servants worked in Mexico. Esperanza’s experiences changes her throughout the course of the novel.
she learns the value and importance of not taking people for granted. She once judged people who she thought were less fortunate than her. Esperanza learns that bad things can happen to anyone, including her. Today, people still go through the changes and experiences Esperanza went through. We always hear about how people go from “ rags to riches”, and those people usually appreciate their belongings they remember how it was when they didn’t have much. Esperanza however, a spoiled rich kid who had lost it all in a very short time. By the end of the story she learned how to appreciate the things that really mattered the most to her, like her family. Also, she learns the importance of giving. This all was a very humbling experience for Esperanza. It's true, money can’t buy
everything.
Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan is a novel about prejudice. Prejudice is when a superior being looks down on colored, sex, lower classes or different races of people. There were many obstacles in this novel that dealt with racism and mistreatment with Mexicans. Mexican immigrants in the 1930's suffered greatly because of the prejudice in the hearts and minds of the farm owners, lawmakers, and the American people.
She dreams about a young boy named Sire, a neighborhood boy who she always catches looking at her, and she starts to develop a small crush on him. Esperanza is told by her parents that he’s a punk and to not talk to him. “I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can’t see” (Cisneros 73). All Esperanza wants to do is leave her little red house with boarded up windows, and move into the house of her dreams. Not only is leaving her house a desire of hers, but also growing up and finding some place better, no matter where it is. Esperanza’s desires of getting older are stronger, but she’s also becoming more independent. She’s beginning her transition into young womanhood. Her fall of innocence occurs in the chapter called ‘Red Clowns’. In this chapter, she experiences something she’s never thought of going through before. This experience teaches Esperanza that she shouldn’t believe everything she hears, and the world is nothing like it is said to be in the books and magazines. I would say Esperanza, so you emphasize what she learned. She also learns that the world is not a perfect place either, but is full of many bitter things and
In the book, Esperanza doesn’t want to follow the norms of the life around her; she wants to be independent. Esperanza states her independence by stating, “Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own,” (Cisneros 108.) The syntax of these sentences stick out and are not complete thoughts, yet they convey much meaning and establish Esperanza’s feeling of not belonging. Esperanza’s feeling of not belonging is also emphasized when her sisters tell her that the events of her life have made her who she is and that is something she can not get rid of. Her sisters explain that the things she has experienced made her who she is by saying, “You will always be esperanza. You will always be mango street. You can’t erase what you know” (105.) What her sisters are trying to tell her is that the past has changed her but it doesn’t have to be a negative thing; it can be used to make her a better person who is stronger and more independent. Esperanza realizes that the things around her don’t really add up to what she believes is right, which also conveys the sense of not
Esperanza Rising is a fiction novel about a young girl named Esperanza Ortega. The story first takes place in the mid 1920’s, years after the Mexican Revolution, on a ranch in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Esperanza Ortega is from a wealthy family, as her father is an affluent landowner. However, Esperanza’s father is killed by outlaws who still remained resentful to landowners after the Mexican revolution ended. Thereafter, the Ortega family continues to experience more struggles which causes them to escape to California during the time of the Great Depression. Esperanza is faced with new challenges of a drastically different lifestyle full of manual labor, financial and economic hardship, and personal battles as she lives in a labor camp in California. As time passes, a situation occurs which puts Esperanza’s family in jeopardy, in doing so, Esperanza takes course in this new challenge to save her family.
Esperanza finally comes to the conclusion that she does not need to fit into the mold of Mango Street. She also realizes that by making her own world, she can do bigger and better things and come back to help others on Mango Street. Not everybody can fit into the same mold and Esperanza made her own. . Esperanza leaving shows that she is a leader and hopefully she will have the others from Mango Street follow in her path. Maybe other people will fit into Esperanza’s mold or they will use her as an example. Esperanza used the other women as an example to make something of herself so all of the negative people she meets and has in her life, they made her the person she wanted to be.
Esperanza is a young girl who struggles with feelings of loneliness and feeling that she doesn’t fit in because she is poor. She always wanted to fit in with the other kids and feel like she was one of them. She loves to write because it helps her feel better about herself writing about her life and her community. Writing helps her with
...working, caring young woman, through hardship and misfortune. This transformation shows that anyone can adjust, and that it is never too late to change your ways and become a different person. Anybody can become nicer if they try, and everyone should, just like Esperanza. By the end of the novel, she realizes how much she has changed for the better, as is shown on the last page of the book (253). “Esperanza smiled and reached over and gently pulled the yarn, unraveling the uneven stitching. Then she looked into Isabel’s trusting eyes and said, ‘Do not be afraid to start over.’” This line, the final line of the entire book, demonstrates that Esperanza realizes that she is different from the person she used to be, and has learned that it was a good transformation. She recognizes that it is a good thing to start anew, and that change should not be feared, but embraced.
She lived in a one-story flat that Esperanza thought was finally a "real house". Esperanza’s family is 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 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”
Women are seen as failure and can’t strive without men in the Mexican-American community. In this novel you can see a cultural approach which examines a particular aspect of a culture and a gender studies approach which examines how literature either perpetuates or challenges gender stereotypes. 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 the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler.
Esperanza, the most liberated of the sisters, devoted her life to make other people’s lives better. She became a reporter and later on died while covering the Gulf Crisis. She returned home, to her family as a spirit. At first, she spoke through La Llorona, a messenger who informed La Loca that her sister has died. All her family members saw her. She appeared to her mother as a little girl who had a nightmare and went near to her mother for comfort. Caridad had conversations with her about politics and La Loca talked to her by the river behind their home.
Many are confined in a marriage in which they are unhappy with, and are reductant to make a change. Some are committed to make a change for themselves. Esperanza ponders each one of these women's lives. Through each role model Esperanza gains crucial life lessons on how to overcome different life hardships. Through some women like her great-grandmother and Ruthie, Esperanza learns she must take control her fate, to avoid marrying young, and not let a male figure dictate her future. Other women like Alicia, Esperanza learns to keep pursuing goals in life and to take control of her destiny no matter what obstruction may lay ahead. From Esperanza’s role models, the moral lesson that can be taken away is to be proactive about your life and to shape your own future. Everyone is a role model to somebody in their life. Strive to leave a positive message behind for the ones shadowing in your
... They didn’t seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn’t seem mine either” (Cisneros 98). The play place that was once so innocent and is now a junkyard that reciprocates Esperanza’s innocence that slowly turns into reality. She is growing up. Additionally, she gains enough confidence and maturity to make her own life decisions. This is shown when she makes the important decision of where she wants her life to take her. “I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain” (Cisneros 88). This shows Esperanza’s maturity to make her own life choices by herself. She is finally confident and independent enough to know where she wants her life to take her. Esperanza finally completes her evolution from young and immature to adult-like and confident.
Esperanza is a very strong woman in herself. Her goals are not to forget her "reason for being" and "to grow despite the concrete" so as to achieve a freedom that's not separate from togetherness.
" They always told me that one day we would move into a real house, that would be ours. A house with trees, a white picket fence, real stairs and running water. The house on Mango Street isn't it. " (Cisneros, 4). This quote gives the reader a better understanding on why Esperanza is so frustrated with her poverty. Esperanza is constantly being let down because her poverty gets in the way. Her parents make all these promises to her that they cannot keep, because they do not have the money. Esperanza is still young and so far her life has been full of disappointment. When Esperanza's family moved into The House on Mango Street Esperanza's was excited, she expected to be moving into her dream house. Yet, once again her family's poverty gets in the way and they move into a shabby house. Esperanza's constant disappointment causes her a great deal of emotional pain, and all this pain leads back to her family's