Symbols In The House On Mango Street

Symbolism is the key to understanding Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street”. By unraveling the symbolism, the reader truly exposes the role of not only Latina women but women of any background. Esperanza, a girl from a Mexican background living in Chicago, writes down what she witnesses while growing up. As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Esperanza hardly comprehends the actions that take place around her, but what she did understand she wrote in her journal. Cisneros used this technique of the point of view of a child, to her advantage by giving the readers enough information of what is taking place on Mango Street so that they can gather the pieces of the puzzle a get the big picture.
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”

(Cisneros 4) house on Mango Street. Mango Street was a symbol of who Esperanza and every Latina girl were to the world making them “a stereotype of Mango Street” (Kalay 122). For most Latina women that meant they were stay-at-home mothers or women who had dreams and never were able to reach them.“Home becomes a symbolization of shame and dishonor” (Kalay 121). Mango Street reflected the life that each of the girls was going to have and what type of woman each would become. Esperanza wanted a home where she didn’t need to feel “rejection of domestic drudgery” (Doyle 22). As Kalay also states home was the sense of connection to the heroine’s inner self:
Furthermore, the home and the Mango Street represent the inner life and psychology of the protagonist. Moving to a better district or barrio is kind of ‘the struggle of the Chicano/a people to find identities that are true to themselves as individuals and artists but that do not betray their culture and their people (Klein, 1992:23). Hence, it can be concluded that both symbols, the house and the Mango Street, have great importance in order to understand Esperanza and other women figures.” (Kalay 125)
This meaning that having where she came from was suppose to tell the story of who she is, but for Esperanza “Mango Street isn’t it” (Cisneros 5). Cisneros uses that to give a characteristic of the difference between Esperanza and the rest of the girls on Mango Street. “[A]nother way to be, otro modo de ser” (Knopfgroup vid.) as Cisneros describes it, is what Esperanza was in search for.
As Esperanza searches for herself she begins to mature, she starts to lose her innocence and she becomes less sheltered from the world but still naive. The more Esperanza intertwines her life with the Latina girls, she picks up bits and pieces from them, making the girls a major part in Esperanza’s life. An important turn in Esperanza’s life is when the girls are outside discussing hips. The girls still being too sheltered don’t quite understand why they have hips but still they know that hips are to “rock the baby asleep inside” (Cisneros 50). Cisneros used this to portray that many girls knew exactly where their life was heading, that they would someday be a mother and have children because that was the only life they knew. Esperanza receives in many occasions, attention from boys and she doesn’t know how to react. She knows that she feels something but she didn’t want a boy-girl romance.
Through the eyes of Esperanza, Cisneros introduces an insight to the “constrained” lives of many girls in Esperanza’s neighborhood (Wissman 17).

In unique ways for each girl, “home is a prison” and the only way they escape it is through Esperanza (Kalay 123). Esperanza is a symbol of hope as her name foretells. From the beginning Esperanza attracts the girls of the neighborhood to her side. One of the older Latina girls in Esperanza’s life is Alicia. Being a young lady of about 18, Alicia, takes her mother’s place as the one who cooks and cleans. She works hard from sun up to sun down then goes to the university. Alicia symbolized all the young women who worked hard enough in life to one day escape from the poor streets of Chicago. But like many Latina females, Alicia had a difficult life with her father, who abused her as Cisneros suggests. Alicia could escape the poverty but in the end she was just another woman in a male dominant world and nothing more. Not many girls were like Alicia; Sally, for example, was the

opposite.
Sally with the “eyes like Egypt” is another Latina figure in Esperanza’s life that made an impact. Esperanza was drawn to Sally from the start because of Sally’s demeanor. Sally was the person that Esperanza admired and wanted to follow but at the same time save. To Esperanza, Sally was the outcast of the pack:
The stories the boys tell in the coatroom, they’re not true. You lean against the schoolyard fence alone with your eyes closed as if no one was watching, as if no one could see you standing there, Sally. What do you think about when you close your eyes like that? And why do you always have to go straight home after school? You become a different Sally. You pull your skirt straight, You rub the blue paint off your eyelids. You don’t laugh, Sally. You look at your feet and walk fast to the house you can’t come out from. (Cisneros 82)
Sally was an unhappy girl and Esperanza was fascinated by her. Sally symbolized the women who wanted a way out of a male-dominated world. Her father beat her excessively to the point that Esperanza’s family took her in, giving Sally comfort. Sally in the end turns out to bring Esperanza to a down fall. Cisneros connects the symbolism of a red balloon with the red clown making the transition of a childhood object, such as a balloon, of happiness and innocence to a person that can be scary and only give a pretense of joy, such as, a clown. Once Esperanza gets raped she loses faith in Sally and learns to trust only herself: she loses hope. Sally marries to escape her life but only ends up under another form of male domination.
In Latino culture, young girls are not allowed to wear heels until the coming of age, that is, 15. For Esperanza having beautiful shoes reflects her inner beauty. The right shoe could bring her out from among the crowd. When Esperanza and her friends, Lucy and Rachel, receive the heels from the mother of little feet, they feel happy and excited. Their innocence and lack of maturity means they don’t understand why the men had such a reaction to them in the heels. For Esperanza, they were “Cinderella” (Cisneros 40) for a day but for the men they were “Christmas” (Cisneros 40). It isn’t until a bum on the road asks for a kiss that Esperanza and the girls begin to feel unease and decide to take off the heels. Cisneros brings up the shoe symbolism again when Esperanza and her family go to her cousin’s baptism party. The brown shoes represent Esperanza’s insecurities and inner doubts. As her cousin stares at her while she reluctantly dances, she begins to gain confidence and her feet feel less ugly and less “big and heavy” (Cisneros 47). Cisneros’ unique use of shoes as a symbol captures the changes that take place as Esperanza reaches maturity. When finally Esperanza grows mature and realizes child’s play is behind her, her “white socks and ugly round shoes” seemed out of place. Shoes were a way of self-identity.
Each of the girls’ stories took a journey from the broken Mango Street to the paper in which Esperanza set them free in. Esperanza realizes that home is not only a physical or mental place but it’s the people she met and grew up with and the pieces of them that she now carries with her. Cisneros developed Esperanza by taking bits from her own past experiences and the experiences from the people she grew up with and blending them to great the perfect characters for Esperanza’s story.