The House on Mango Street Essay The House on Mango Street shows the emotions of a little girl who moves into a real house for the first time. It is narrated by the little girl who explains why she is unhappy with her family's choice. While she feels as if she should be happy she knows that this is not what her family and herself want. The narrator feels that the house is not what she wants and that the house is not what they deserve. The narrator has always wanted to live in a house like in TV. Her parents have always told her, “And we’d have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody.” But when they eventually did get and move into a real house it was nothing like what she had imagined, “But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all...Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in...There are stairs in our house, but they’re ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Everybody has to …show more content…
She always wanted a house she could point to and say, “I live there”. But when she moved into the house on Mango Street none of her wishes came true. When the narrator thinks about what happened at her house on loomis she knows the new house she lives in is not good, “ ‘Where do you live?’ She asked. ‘There,’ I said, pointing up to the third floor. ‘You live there?’ There. I had to look to where she pointed - the third floor, paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn’t fall out...I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it.” From this you can observe that the narrator is very uncomfortable from an emotional standpoint living in the house on Mango Street. She wants a home she can point to proudly and optimistically, but she can not point to the slowly decaying house on Mango
The House on Mango Street is a novel by Sandra Cisneros. It is set in a poor, Latino neighborhood around 1960. The main character, Esperanza, is expected to get married in order to support herself. However, Esperanza strives for independence, and seeks to end the cycle of abusive patriarchy that holds Mango Street in thrall. Through the use of syntax and figurative language, Cisneros establishes that a sense of not belonging can fuel an individual’s desire for a better future.
The House on Mango Street, a fictional book written by Sandra Cisneros is a book filled with many hidden messages. The book revolves around a young girl named Esperanza who feels out of place with the life she has. She sees that the things around her don’t really add up. The story is told from Esperanza’s perspective and the events she goes through to find herself. Through the strategy of fragmenting sentences, Cisneros establishes that the sense of not belonging, creates a person’s individuality that makes them who they are.
In the opening sequence, Nea describes their move to ‘real America’ from “...the hot sweaty America where we lived packed together in an apartment with bars on the windows on a street where angry boys in cars played loud music and shot guns at each other in the night” (281). Despite already living in America, she has this idolistic dream of America influenced by the talks of running away when they are older between her and Sourdi. Their dream is never fulfilled due to Sourdi’s arranged marriage, furthering the physical and metaphorical distance between the two sisters. However, when she receives a phone call from her distraught sister, thinking the worst has happened, Nea goes to Sourdi’s house to convince her to run away. Nea describes Sourdi’s house as, “The lace under curtains before the cheerful flowered draperies, the flourishing plants in the windows, next to little trinkets, figurines in glass that caught the light. Every space crammed with something sweet” (292). However, the inside of the house is a mess: “Baby toys on the carpet, shoes in a pile by the door, old newspapers scattered on an end table anchored by a bowl of peanut shells. The TV was blaring somewhere, and a baby was crying” (292). These contrasting descriptions of the Sourdi’s house echos Nea’s confusion of fantasy with reality. Her idolistic dream of having a close relationship with her sister clouds her from seeing that has her sister has matured and no longer needs their relationship like she
“I don’t set out to be different, I set out to be me people think it’s different.” Lil Wayne expresses how he feels about his career. Meanwhile, this quote is saying that everyone is trying to be themselves whether people think it’s different or not. In House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros the motivation for those in poverty is dreams; therefore, those who struggle economically overwork those who are economically stable to obtain their goals and dreams. Cisneros uses her choice of words to display the attitude about how the characters feel about their dreams and goals.
Cisneros depicts Mango Street as a rough neighborhood, but she also conveys a sense of community. She writes down that “we are safe,” (Cisneros, 28) to indicate that she can find the sense of community. Even if the author does not think she belongs to Mango Street, she does not deny that her community lives there. At the beginning of The House on Mango Street, Cisneros states that “I had to have a house. A real house,” (Cisneros, 5) illustrating that after knowing the American society’s evaluation criteria of success, she wants to follow the upward mobility and be viewed as a successful figure not only because she wants to be appreciated but also because white people will change their stereotypes of Hispanic people if they see that a Hispanic woman can be as successful as other whites. Her ambition triggers her to want to explore the meaning of being a Hispanic girl in the real world. Furthermore, in the “My name” session, the author depicts her great-grandmother’s life. “She looked out the window her whole life… but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” (Cisneros, 11) Cisneros wants a marriage formed because of love, like most white people do; her desire indicates that she wants to live like the whites, so that they will respect her and the Hispanic race later. In addition, Cisneros points out that she
The following will discuss the presentation of female characters in Gregory Nava’s El norte and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. The film ‘El Norte’ tells the story of a brother and sister ,Enrique and Rosa, who flee from their home of Guatemala in search of a better life due to government killings and kidnappings after an attempted formation of a workers union by their father. The film gives an indication of the difficulties Spanish speakers had in their own countries and their survival in America. The House on Mango Street , a novel consisting of a series of vignettes tells the story of Esperanza, a young Latina girl, after her family moved to Mango Street, a poor Spanish barrio in Chicago. The story is told through the eyes
“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and how we grow through our life experiences. In her personal, Cisneros depicts Esperanza Cordero’s coming-of-age through a series of vignettes about her family, neighborhood, and personalized dreams. Although the novel does not follow a traditional chronological pattern, a story emerges, nevertheless, of Esperanza’s search to discover the meaning of her life and her personal identity. The novel begins when the Cordero family moves into a new house, the first they have ever owned, on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza is disappointed by the “small and red” house “with tight steps in front and bricks crumbling in places” (5). It is not at all the dream-house her parents had always talked about, nor is it the house on a hill that Esperanza vows to one day own for herself. Despite its location in a rough neighborhood and difficult lifestyle, Mango Street is the place with which she identifies at this time in her life.
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.
Sandra Cisneros, the author of House on Mango Street conveys her thoughts throughout the whole book. In the book, she has a large family of seven, while in reality she has a family of 9. Both of these families are large, and this allows for the author to express her feeling toward these large families. There are two sides to the story that Sandra Cisneros tries to state. First is the identity already planned out by the people around her including her grandma, neighbors, and family. Then, there is the identity Esperanza tries to make for herself throughout the story. Growing up in an underdeveloped family, Esperanza finds it very hard to express her own thoughts. Esperanza dreams for this intangible idea of escaping poverty, but the siblings needing her help force this unrealistic dream to be unimaginable. “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor,” (Cisneros 9) clearly shows what the author is trying to state; Esperanza wants to dream her own future but just does not have the power to do so. Living in a home that feels like hell, Esperanza wants to escape the ropes society has placed on her and live life the way she wants to with her own unique identity.
After Esperanza recognizes that it may take a while to find her dream house, she starts to appreciate the house on Mango Street. Esperanza realizes how many differences there are between people who have very nice houses and not very nice houses, she begins to think about what her life will be like in the future, “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, ‘Can I come in?’ I’ll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house” (Cisneros 64). As Esperanza beings to look at a different perspective of the world, she still looks forward to pursuing her dreams, but she understands the negative impact people may be dealing through, she doesn’t want them to go through what she has to. As Esperanza becomes more mature, she has a greater appreciation for her house: “What I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to” (Cisneros 79). Esperanza remembers the house on Mango Street the most out of all the houses she has lived in, she feels like her heart belongs to the house but her mind doesn’t. Thus, Esperanza beings to develop more appreciation towards her house the more she grows up and looks at a different view of
The House On Mango Street is based on the house Sandra Cisneros lived in growing up. The actual house she lived in has been demolished years ago but the house across the street of the original house is said to be the mirror reflection it. This “mirror reflection” of The House On Mango Street is located in Chicago, where the book takes place. This fact aligns with the book “The House On Mmango Street” written by Sandra Cisneros because the house which is located on mango street is where Esperanza starts growing up seeing the reality on how hard it really is to get what you want. In The House on Mango Street Esperanza's moves into a house on Mango St. after living in several other houses. Esperanza’s new, and previous houses are not like the
All of a sudden, the grandmother realized that the house was in Tennessee, not Georgia, and “the thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner…Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey’s shoulder”(18-19). Bailey’s hands moved, and the car swerved and flipped on the side of the road. The grandmother’s first disruption of the trip leads to a second even worse disruption, and now the family is stranded on an unknown road without a
The House on Mango Street are a collection of vignettes written by Sandra Cisneros of her childhood. Cisneros vignettes shows the readers her childhood experiences of a young, inquisitive girl who then blossoms into a independent woman in Mango Street. They range from friendship and family values to scary experiences, but all of her vignettes convey a theme that she tries to express to her audience. One constant moral, Cisneros exhibits to her audience, is the entrapment of females in Mango Street. The author portrays many of the women in either abusive and submissive relationships, waiting for men to change their lives, and some very few wanting to change their life by themselves. The women in The House on Mango Street perceive beauty as
The house the family bought in “The Jungle” had both positive and negative symbols. The house symbolized a place for hopes and dreams in the beginning of the story. The family came to America for a better life, but later in the story things changed.
The hurricane had hit a few days before and left so many people homeless. Emma, John and their children Lily and Max lost their home in the horrible hurricane. “We went to a shelter and what we came back to was dreadful,” said Emma. “All that’s left of the house is broken boards and debris of what used to be our family’s belongings.”