Shame By Sandra Cisneros Analysis

The two essays discussed in this paper are ‘My Name’ and ‘Shame’. Sandra Cisneros in ‘My Name’ presents a very strong point of view of how her name has different meaning and it gives her memories of her grandmother with who she shares her name and also regrets the fact that it is somehow related to the weakness she and her grandmother used to feel when they were supposed to be behaving in a certain manner because they were Mexican and were not given power and freedom. There name was a sort of reminder of the fact that they have to be soft and polite and quite because none of the meaning of the name represents something which is powerful and expressive and strong. Esperanza in English means hope while in Spanish it meant sadness and waiting and that inflicted nations of the society towards women.
Richard Gregory in ‘Shame’ described incidences of his childhood when he was made shameful every time by his ethnicity or by the fact that he did not have a dad. He describes a his childhood where he was humiliated in front of the whole class by his teacher and also loved helene . The teacher pointed out that he lived on the relief money collected by the class and had no dad which got him a scar in his memory as a shameful event . He could not forget how he was being on the side and everybody felt sorry for him, it was something that made him feel weak and guilty for no reason. Both of the essays portrayed the protagonists very strongly and had some of their weaknesses revealed which has notions connected with the perception of the people and society.
Both the essays have the similarity that they discuss about the weaknesses in the protagonists life. They describe the social stigmas and the fear of being objected or feel guilty about wh...

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...tached with it which were affecting her growing up as a writer while Richard had to struggle his past and he did a lot of work against the discrimination done towards the blacks and other areas like athletics.
The two essays were autobiographical stories of the authors and discussed about the inner and deep problems that shaped them to good people and their lives that developed their ideas of name, identity and social perception. Both of them have a strong and effected the pictures of the thoughts and the use of words has brought strength to the texts. Both the stories -

although were quite different from one another , they had a similarity of picture of the society that led to the pressure and the effect on them psychologically and to be the winners at the end .

Richard Gregory, “Shame” pp. 288 – 293.
Sandra Cisneros, “My Name” pp.109 – 110.