What Is the Biggest Obstacle to Reaching the American Dream? Have you ever tried reaching a dream but had some trouble achieving it? When trying to achieve the American Dream, you have some challenges you will face. The House on Mango Street is the story of a girl named Esperanza, who lives in a poor area of Chicago and encounters some obstacles when trying to achieve her dream. Her family and her neighbors all have one thing in common. They all are trying to reach the American Dream but are facing some troubles. When trying to achieve your dream, what challenges can you face? Three obstacles you can face when trying to reach the American Dream are having financial issues, not having a proper education, and moving into the United States. …show more content…
To people, when you achieve the American Dream, it means you have a proper home, family, pet(s), and a car/van. In document A Esperanza says, “This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.” With this evidence, it is clear that Esperanza’s family is facing the obstacle of not having enough money to buy a proper house that they can all enjoy living in. In document B, Esperanza’s mother is talking to Esperanza and says, “You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.” This is another way of showing that having financial problems can be an obstacle. Esperanza’s mother felt embarrassed and didn’t feel encouraged in the cause of not having the money to buy nice clothes. The documents A and B prove that having financial issues is an obstacle when trying to achieve the American …show more content…
In document C, Mamacita’s husband exclaims to Mamacita, “We are home. This is home. Here I am and here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!” When Mamacita came to the United States, she didn’t know any English, so she had a hard time understanding everyone around her. This leads her to miss her old home back in her home country, but it takes a long time for her husband to understand that she is going through a rough time trying to get used to everything. When moving into a country to stay permanently you can have a hard time to getting used to things which can make you wish everything was like it was before and make you feel hopeless. In document D, Esperanza is re-telling the story of Geraldo, a guy Marin met at a dance. She explains, “His name was Geraldo. And his home is in another country….Geraldo–he went north … we never heard from him again.” Geraldo came from another country probably to visit but he got into a hit-and-run accident and died. He didn’t have any identification with him, which made the situation worse since no one knew who he was. No one knew what happened to him back in his home country since in the U.S. no one knew who he was or what he did or who his family members were. Using documents C and D, it was proven that moving into the United States can be an obstacle you can face when trying to achieve the American
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.
Reading is similar to looking into a mirror: audiences recognize themselves in the experiences and characters on the pages. They see the good, the bad, and are brought back to experiences they had overlooked to learn something more about themselves. Some characters touch readers so intimately that they inspire readers to be better than they already are. House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, follows a young girl named Esperanza and her experiences while living on Mango Street. She is introduced with her desperate wish to escape her poor mostly-Latino neighborhood and live in a house of her own. Esperanza compares herself to her family, innocently knowing what she wants from a young ages. She is observant and holds insights into the lives of others, learning lessons from each person she encounters. While
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.
The autobiography Journey of Hope Memoirs of a Mexican Girl and the documentary short “Children in No Man’s Land” has brought into light three important topics that are results of immigration. The first is the “American dream” and the notion of yearning to migrate abroad to seek dreams formed by misconceptions of the limited knowledge one has of their destination. The second is assimilation and the process of assimilating oneself to their new homeland. The third is a unique situation presented in both these works, which is estrangement from their family members. This paper attempts to critically analyze the unique journey of immigration for Rosalina, Maria de Jesus, and Rene. It argues that glorified images and dreams of what America could be like falsely creates a sense of hope. It focuses on the dual task of reviewing the process of assimilation based on each immigrant situation, and an examination of familial estrangement as
At the novel's end, Esperanza declares that she is too strong for Mango Street to keep her forever. What is the nature of her strength? How does Cisneros establish this characteristic elsewhere in the book?
Sally wears make-up to school and skirts that she pulls up, but when she goes home
Today in society, people have different perspectives on what is the American dream because we as Americans are all not the same because we all see things differently than what another person sees. Some families with tons of money could be living a horrible life, always fighting with each other and never happy while a not so rich family could just be happy and make due with what they have as long as they stick together; maybe the dream for some people is more realistic than the dream for other people who may have more opportunities. This could be their dream. The House on Mango Street presents good aspects of the American Dream and offers insights on the extension of the American Dream they are living; wanting more than they can achieve with in their means and desires that one must uphold to keep a family together peacefully. The House on Mango Street presents a family that lives right below the American Dream (kind of like an extension of it); they have a house, beautiful family that loves each other, mother and father who are together and love each other and their children the same, but because they still do not have the financial security one must obtain to freely pursue that dream, it just would not be a typi...
When they first arrived to the United States their only hopes were that they would have a better life and that there were better special education programs for Maribel to attend at Evers. Alma imagined that the buildings would look a lot nicer than they really were. The family was surprised that they could take things from the street that someone threw out of their house, but were in working condition. When they arrived they didn’t think that you would actually have to learn English to be able to communicate, but after going to stores and interacting with people they learned that they need to learn English if they want to live in America. They hoped that you could be able to afford anything in America by working, but based off of the money Arturo was making they learned that you can’t buy everyth...
Everyone has specific characteristics and qualities that make them the way they present themselves. Young, middle-aged, and old people are constantly forming the essentials that affect their self-awareness through their daily activities. Forming one’s identity is an ongoing process, because every person in the world can change people one way or another. In The House on Mango Street, the experiences young Esperanza faced day to day develop her true individuality.
“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.
The American dream has been a tangible idea, greatly sought after by many over the course of American History. The dream has eluded many, to strive for achieving in America’s open markets, and become a self-made man from the sweat of one’s brow. The idea of become self-sufficient, and have limitless dreams that take one as far as they are willing to imagine is captured very differently from The Great Gatsby to A Raisin in the Sun. Both novels seem to have the American dream as their subject, but both end up having very different outcomes to how one achieves it, and if the dream is truly in existence, namely with the characters of Jay Gatsby and Walter Younger. The books mainly brushes upon the idea of what the American dream truly is, how one achieves the dream, and what the real fulfillment the dream encompasses.
The American Dream started off as propaganda in order to make the American people of the early twentieth century work harder to build a successful economy. The idea of the American Dream is that every American citizen has an equal opportunity of making money along with owning a large house, some land, and having a family with kids. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck illustrates that the American Dream, no matter how simple is impossible to achieve. As everyone has their own interpretation of the American Dream, Steinbeck uses George and Lennie, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife to demonstrate how the American Dream is impossible to achieve and how important the dream was for people so they could carry on with their lives.
In the novel, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros describes the problems that Latino women face in a society that treats them as second class citizens. A society that is dominated by men, and a society that values women for what they look like, and not for what is on inside. In her Novel Cisneros wants us to envision the obstacles that Latino women must face everyday in order to be treated equally.
In the United States there is an idea many pursue called the American dream, which differs from person to person. The American dream according to americanradioworks.publicradio.org is “a revolutionary notion: each person has the right to pursue happiness, and the freedom to strive for a better life through hard work and fair ambition”. Yet it has been said there is no real definition of American dream, instead it merely proves that it has an unconscious influence in American mentality (Ştiuliuc 1). The American dream is different for each person because everyone yearns for things that will they hope will in return make them happy. Whatever that may be, each person goes through different struggles to obtain what they want. According to Frederic Carpenter, the American dream “has never been defined exactly, and probably never can be. It is both too various and too vague” (3). The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse depicts the different interpretations on what the American dream actually is through the opinions and actions of Hector Esperanza, Efren Mendoza and Mrs. Calhoun.
From families looking to flee harsh living conditions in their native country to American citizens wishing to escape impoverished conditions through hard work and determination, the “American Dream” is a concept that people throughout the world have aspired to achieve for hundreds of years. Regardless of birthplace or socioeconomic status, the “American Dream” promises success, prosperity and upward mobility to any citizen with ambition and work ethic. Hundreds of millions of American citizens as well as immigrants have flourished in the United States throughout the course of history in a society with a thriving middle-class. However, in recent years, this dream has become increasingly difficult to achieve for those who are not already wealthy.