Hope on Mango Street In the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, a society where women are treated very badly and poverty is in abundance, is presented. After reading this book I have come to the conclusion that this book is a wonderful, yet depressing bildungsroman that contains important life lessons as well as the reality of life is like for a poor Hispanic girl growing up. Throughout the book there are many vignettes that are full of dreams that are never satisfied. The main character’s name in English means hope in Spanish. Throughout the book she is living hope. In the beginning of the book, Esperanza is a Hispanic girl dreaming of a house of her own. Esperanza grows up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago where many …show more content…
of the poor areas are racially segregated and there is crime. We learn that she used to live in an apartment with no running water, but has just moved into a house of her own which is very small and run down. Her expectations of a great house of her own are not met. She is almost hopeless. “Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath.” (p.3-4) When Esperanza moves into the house on Mango Street she is twelve but matures significantly during the year, both sexually and emotionally. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is not ready to leave the asexuality of childhood. She is very ignorant about attraction and says that boys and girls live in completely different worlds. She is so childlike that she cannot even speak to her brothers outside of the house. “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can't be seen talking to girls.” (p.8) The novel also includes the stories of many of Esperanza’s neighbors, giving a full picture of the neighborhood and showing different choices Esperanza makes. As a child, Esperanza wants to escape Mango Street. She feels no responsibility to her family or to the people around her, and she wants to leave them all behind. Once Esperanza becomes familiar with the people in her neighborhood, however, she begins to feel affection and, ultimately, responsibility for them. She does not see herself as an individual striving for self-determination. Instead, she recognizes herself as a member of a community who must give back to her community in order to discontinue a cycle of poverty that is common in the neighborhood. One of the conflicts in the novel happens when she begins to mature and the desire for men appears in addition to her desire for a home of her dreams. At first, she thinks she can have both, but as Esperanza watches other women in the neighborhood and the marriages, she begins to doubt that she can pursue both. The fight for self-definition is a reoccurring theme in the bildungsroman. Esperanza struggles to define herself both as a woman and as an artist, and her perception of her identity changes over the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel Esperanza wants to change her name so that she can define herself on her own terms, instead of accepting a name that expresses her family heritage. “I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.” (p.11) Esperanza changes during the book and decides she would like to be “beautiful and cruel” so that men will like her but not hurt her, and she attempts doing that by becoming friends with Sally, a boy crazy girl the same age as Esperanza.
However, once Esperanza is assaulted, her opinion changes again and she does not want to be beautiful and cruel anymore. She finds herself in the position where she is unsure. “In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away. I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.” (p.89) The character development and change that occurs with Esperanza is very important because it will permanently change and define who she is and who she will become. At the very end of the book Esperanza’s maturity through selflessness is shown when she says how one day she will leave Mango Street, and the she will come back for the ones she left behind. This quote taken from an article where a writer gave her opinion on many of Cisneros’s works. It relates to my opinion in that it gives you a good feeling right along with harsh …show more content…
reality. “Cisneros’ prose wins hands down over her poems in the very areas where those are strong: colloquialism, direct realism, clear unmuddied assertive feeling.
Plus we get here the thick situatedness of a book where every piece is a portrait, or a group portrait, or a memoir. These little stories have the stylish and color of folk art and the sharp poignancy of lives glimpsed as they press against their limits.” The novel is full of passages where we see a glimpse of what someone’s life is like when they have “reached their limits”. Sally is one such example of a life we barely see yet contains a great deal of problems and has difficulty living. She occasionally leaves Esperanza to go be with boyfriends and her father is abusive to her. She falls in love with a salesman whom she marries. He locks her in a room to “protect her” while he is gone. This book has had its ups and downs, and there are many things to be learned from it. Yes, it is sad, but the values revealed in a way specific to the book give a buoyant feeling of gratitude. If it was only a happy book, there is no way the messages of hope, friendship, and reality could have been conveyed in as good of a
way. MLA format citation for literary criticism quote: Kafatou, Sarah. "The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros; Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros; My Wicked Wicked Ways by Sandra Cisneros." Editorial. Harvard Review, No. 3 Dec. 1993: 197-98. Web. <: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559690>.
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 is the heart and soul of this story. She changes and develops new habits over the course of the book. Because of how the book is written, she’s also the main character who gives the story it’s unity. Everything in the story is told in her perspective anyway so she could be the narrator and the protagonist. Even the stories about other characters have some sort of connection with Esperanza. She is The House On Mango Street, she is Esperanza.
...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 was not a master of style, plot development or characterization, but the intensity of feeling and aspiration are evident in her narratives that overrides her imperfections. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, published in 1925, are both aimed at adolescent and adult audiences that deal with deeply disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children as adults. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls living in destitute neighborhoods; and both young girls witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless. Although the narrators face these overwhelming obstacles, they manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength remaining intact. Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old.
This is one of the most important chapters because this is where Esperanza shows that she is growing up from a girl to a woman. Esperanza says that someday she “wants to be all new and shiny.” She says that she wants to sit out bad and have a boy hanging all over her. I find this interesting because I’m sure that everyone goes through something like this where we want to be rebellious and defy our parents. These are just some of the signs that Esperanza does not want to accept what her parents say is law, and she wants to try out some things of her own. For example, in the beginning of the chapter, Esperanza does not say that Sire is a punk, her father does. With children, this is not a good way to be. This just makes Sire seem exciting and sparks Esperanza’s interest to be around him.
In the poor slums of Chicago, a family living in poverty struggles to get by. In the book, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza is a twelve year old girl who lives with her family in the Windy City. She lives with her three siblings and both parents on Mango Street. Esperanza has no control over her life and family’s poverty. People who have no control over their life desperately seek change. Esperanza seeks to change her name, her home, and her destiny as a way to control her life.
Gabriela Quintanilla Mrs. Allen A.P English 12 12 March 2014 The House on Mango Street Sandra Cisneros once said “'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ’ Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.” In the novel I read, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, a twelve-year-old Chicana (Mexican-American girl), Esperanza, saw self-definition as a struggle, this was a major theme in the novel through Esperanza’s actions and the ones around her. Esperanza tries to find identity in herself as a woman as well as an artist throughout the novel through her encounters.
Esperanza is a determined character by working hard and dreaming a lot to make it a better situation. (When Esperanza points out that she needs money
Readers have interpreted this novel in a personal way, leaving some aspects of the novel to be forgotten or over looked. Either way readers are given the opportunity to ask what the literature can tell them about themselves. Through analysis of the novel readers can infer that Esperanza is Mango Street, as well as the readers are Esperanza. So, readers must consider what to do with and about Mango Street and how it applies to
Esperanza, a strong- willed girl who dreams big despite her surroundings and restrictions, is the main character in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Esperanza represents the females of her poor and impoverished neighborhood who wish to change and better themselves. She desires both sexuality and autonomy of marriage, hoping to break the typical life cycle of woman in her family and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, she goes through many different changes in search of identity and maturity, seeking self-reliance and interdependence, through insecure ideas such as owning her own house, instead of seeking comfort and in one’s self. Esperanza matures as she begins to see the difference. She evolves from an insecure girl to a mature young lady through her difficult life experiences and the people she comes across. It is through personal encounters and experiences that Esperanza begins to become sexually aware and acceptance her place and self-definition in her community.
Esperanza, who faces multiple struggles while living in a Latino community in Chicago on Mango Street. Esperanza is not happy being raised in the same culture as the other women around her and living as a Mexican American in the U.S. culture. Throughout the novel, Cisneros describes the problems women face, like fighting for equality, respect, and freedom within a Hispanic society. In her novel, Cisneros emphasizes the struggles that Esperanza and Latino women had to face in the U.S. society during the middle of the twentieth century.
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.
Sandra Cisneros' strong cultural values greatly influence The House on Mango Street. Esperanza's life is the medium that Cisneros uses to bring the Latin community to her audience. The novel deals with the Catholic Church and its position in the Latin community. The deep family connection within the barrio also plays an important role in the novel. Esperanza's struggle to become a part of the world outside of Mango Street represents the desire many Chicanos have to grow beyond their neighborhoods.
In the vignette, “Darius and the Clouds,” Esperanza realizes, “You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky” (Cisneros 33). This event in the novel proves that Esperanza is growing up because she realizes that you don’t need money to be happy. She is making the best out of what she has. Esperanza also shows change in “Bums in the Attic.” She says, “One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from” (Cisneros 87). This quote is effective because it adds to the reader’s appreciation of the story, since many people can relate. Identity can be changed by influences from people or an environment, but some things are permanent. Esperanza must change some parts of her identity to become her true self, the person she has been searching
This written passage is an ideal depiction of how much Esperanza’s character changed by the end of this story. Her character began as a childish girl and transformed into a mature young lady, a lady who gained a great deal of compassion, empathy, and self-esteem.