Victor Contreras Mx. -. Kim English P5 16 May 2024 Title In the novel The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, the protagonist Esperanza is given the gift of family. Esperanza also finds her gift a burden at times. Esperanza's gift is advantageous to her because her family is a group that she can rely on. In contrast, Esperanz’s gift is also seen as an impediment. Throughout the novel, you can see how Esperanza's family supports her, but in some instances, Esperanza feels her family holds her back The Nature of Esperanza’s gift contributes to the author's theme which is finding your identity while also remembering where you come from. 1. Early on in the novel you can see the role Esperanza's family plays in her life as both a provider and a support system. Although …show more content…
And since she comes right after me, she is my responsibility... Someday I will have a best friend of my own.until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 8-9). This conveys Esperanza's view of her family. You can see that Esperanza feels as if her sister Nenny holds her back from discovering herself. Although Esperanza views her family as a burden, there are occasions where she can connect and feel understood by her family. You can see this explicitly when the novel states “But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would know.One day we were passing a house that looked in my mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico.I’m not even sure why I thought it, but it seemed to feel right. Look at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico. Rachel and Lucy look at me like I’m crazy, but before they can laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that’s Mexico, all right. That's what I was thinking exactly.” (Cisneros 17-18) With this, you can see how in a situation where Esperanza would have felt embarrassed or even been ridiculed, her sister Nenny can relate to her statement and validate Esperanza’s
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.
Esperanza, the main character of The House on Mango Street, a novella written by Sandra Cisneros in 1984, has always felt like she didn’t belong. Esperanza sought a different life than the ones that people around her were living. She wanted to be in control of her life, and not be taken away by men as so many others around her had. Esperanza wanted to move away from Mango Street and find the house, and life she had always looked for. Through the use of repetition, Sandra Cisneros conveys a sense of not belonging, that can make a person strong enough to aspire to a better life.
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
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is about a girl who struggles finding her true self. Esperanza sees the typical figures like Sally and Rafaela. There is also her neighbor Marin shows the “true” identity for women on Mango Street. She also sees her mother is and is not like that at the same time. The main struggle that Esperanza has is with beauty. This explains why most of the negative people that Esperanza meets on Mango Street, and her gender, helped her see the mold she needed to fill in order to give herself an identity.
Modern society believes in the difficult yet essential nature of coming of age. Adolescents must face difficult obstacles in life, whether it be familial, academic, or fiscal obstacles. In the House on Mango Street, Esperanza longs for a life where she will no longer be chained to Mango Street and aspires to escape. As Esperanza grows up on Mango Street, she witnesses the effect of poverty, violence, and loss of dreams on her friends and family, leading her to feel confused and broken, clinging to the dream of leaving Mango Street. Cisneros uses a reflective tone to argue that a change in one’s identity is inevitable, but ultimately for the worst.
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.
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.
In The House on Mango Street, Cisneroz agitates the theme of diversity through her use of characters and setting. Cisneroz paints a multitude of events that follow a young girl named Esperanza growing up in the diverse section of Chicago. She is dealing with searching for a release from the low expectations that the Latino communities often put women whether young or old are put against. Cisneroz often draws from her life growing up that she was able to base Esperanza's life experiences on and portray an accurate view on Latino societies today. Cisneroz used the chapter “Boys and Girls” and “Beautiful and cruel” to portray Esperanzas growth from a young curious girl to a wise woman. She came into her own personal awareness and her actions that she has to now be held accountable for.
Throughout The House on Mango Street Esperanza learns to resist the gender norms that are deeply imbedded in her community. The majority of the other female characters in the novel have internalized the male viewpoint and they believe that it is their husbands or fathers responsibility to care for them and make any crucial decisions for them. However, despite the influence of other female characters that are “immasculated”, according to Judith Fetterley, Esperanza’s experiences lead her to become a “resisting reader” in Fettereley’s terminology because she does not want to become like the women that she observes, stuck under a man’s authority. She desires to leave Mango Street and have a “home of her own” so that she will never be forced to depend on a man (Cisneros 108). During the course of the novel Esperanza eventually realizes that it is also her duty to go back to Mango Street “For the ones that cannot out”, or the women who do not challenge the norms (110). Esperanza eventually turns to her writing as a way to escape from her situation without having to marry a man that she would be forced to rely on like some of her friends do.
“Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without me having to explain them” (9). These are the longing words spoken by Esperanza. In the novel The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is young girl experiencing adolescence not only longing for a place to fit in but also wanting to be beautiful. This becomes complicated as Esperanza becomes more sexually aware. Throughout the novel, Cisneros argues the importance of beauty and how Esperanza deals with beauty as a part of her identity. When Esperanza meets Sally a new friend, Esperanza’s whole world is turned upside down. Esperanza’s views on beauty change from a positive outlook to a negative one by watching how beauty has damaged Sally’s life.
Characteristics are what define us as human beings. When comparing and contrasting one person to another, characteristics is used to do so. Characteristics such as physical appearance or emotional perceptions help define how a person is perceived, and how we do, or do not compare in such ways. Authors use descriptions of physical characteristics to help us paint a picture in our mind of characters’ appearance from their books while, characteristics of a character’s mentality help develop a personality for us to relate to. It is important for authors to develop personality so readers can relate or understand the differences from themselves and the characters of their stories. The house on mango street is a book written by Sandra Cisneros which, is about main character Esperanza coming to age. Esperanza speaks frequently about having a house she can be proud to call her own. The house in this story represents both physical and intangible wants and needs of the main character. I cannot compare myself physically due to the difference in sex but, Esperanza and I do have similarities
“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.
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.
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.