In The House of the Spirits, the characters are separated into a lower, working class, and a higher, more privileged, landowning class. The author uses the privilege of high-class citizens not having to suffer consequences to portray the theme of low class people in Latin American suffering injustices. Allende uses the Truebas to show the inequity between the two classes. They are part of the land owning, privileged class that usually doesn’t suffer consequences for its actions. For example Esteban Trueba, a wealthy landowner, found out that Pedro Tercero Garcia, a member of the lower class, was seeing his daughter Blanca. When Esteban approached Blanca, he howled and beat her. Then once they returned home, Clara stood up for Blanca which enraged Esteban even …show more content…
Clara and Blanca then leave Tres Marias and Clara vows to never speak to him again. Subsequently, Esteban goes after Pedro and in his rage cuts off three of his fingers. “I went to the police station in town and bribed the guardsmen to help me look for [Pedro]. I ordered them not to lock him up, but to turn him over to me without any fuss.”(203). Pedro Tercero Garcia, part of the lower class, gets his fingers chopped off because he was seen by Esteban to have caused the chain of events that lead to Clara and Blanca hating him. While Esteban, who beat his wife and cut his daughter’s lover’s fingers off, suffered no consequences. Esteban had the power to order the police to do what he liked, only because of his status. Pedro was left defenseless due to his lower class. He had no authority to help him protect himself against the police, and the wealthy patron. Allende uses Esteban as an example to show how a member of the
Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario contains an overarching theme of family. This theme is developed throughout the book through the author’s style of changing the focus of the book for the reader. By changing the focus of the book, the author is able to represent the feelings of many of the books characters, as well as the events that occur for different characters. Through the exploration of many different characters lives, the author is effectively able to show the reader the effects of separation upon different characters. As seen by the quote, Nazario is focusing on Maria Isabel’s life for a portion of the last section of the book.
Also Salamanca did not only blame her friends, but she also blamed herself. After Sal 's mother died, she thought that her mother 's death was her fault. Her mother was pregnant and the loss of her baby may have caused the reason that she wanted to pursue her journey. Sal was hanging on a tree and she fell, her mother, still pregnant, carried her to the hospital. When her mother was giving birth to the baby, he was born dead, she then needed to do a hysterectomy, she could not have more babies.
In Latino Chicago, the women were left in the house with house with only housework to do. If a wife disobeyed her husband's wishes, she was very likely to be beaten. The men of the community ruled as if they were brutal dictators. Esperanza describes life being stuck at home. "
The second narrative of a violent crime came from Paul Bernardo in his first interview with the police after his life sentence. Paul Bernardo is known as the Scarborough rapist who was convicted of killing two schoolgirls, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and almost twenty sexual assaults. In his interview Paul said, “Sexual performance anxiety was the driving force that led him to leave a trail of dead girls and sexual violence across Southern Ontario. I used sex as a vice.
After that scene, we can see how Reyna’s and his family are eating and spending time together in the kitchen, while they are waiting to get ready to go to another dance of pachuco’s party. Henry and his friends arrive to the party; we can see how El
Her development starts to reveal itself in the story when she starts saying “A boy held me once so hard, I swear, I felt the grip and weight of his arms but it was a dream” (75). This quotation reflects her process because at the beginning of the story Esperanza sets out despising boys and now she’s dreaming about holding a boy. This makes the reader believe that Esperanza is starting to become a mature young girl. She’s having delusions about boys.
Many people are undermined by the drawbacks of belonging to a low socioeconomic status. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is raised in a poor, Latino community, causing her to be introduced to poverty at an early age. This introduction of poverty affects Esperanza in many ways, one including that she is unable to find success. Esperanza struggles to achieve success in life because the cycle of poverty restricts her in a position in which she cannot break free from her socioeconomic status.
The abusive husband is Juan Pedro. Juan Pedro wants to take Cleofilas and move to Seguin, Texas and start a new life there. He can’t get a decent job and they live in a low-end home. He takes his frustration out on Cleofilas. He beats her, cheats on her, and yells at her for things that are not her fault.
Much like a bad dream where one cannot move, Esperanza has no power or voice; her entire life resembles this nightmare. She is discriminated against, not only for her race, but for her gender and social status as well. Dealing with all this unfair treatment, she is easily taken advantage of, leading to a desperation for a better life. She craves for a “real house” but, due to her family’s poverty, they are forced to move frequently into dingy apartments. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’s use of rhetorical devices like imagery, analogies, and motifs, helps to create the text’s longing tone.
Pedro was the seventh child besides all of his thirteen siblings. Benilda was physically abused by a sex worker and clients. He was kicked out of the house by his mom after having sexual intercourse with his younger sister. Lopes then ran away from this and went to Bogota. He became homeless along with many other young children, they were known as the “ gaminies”.
Also, he shows how cross-class relationships are not really the norm in his story. Diaz argues that socio-economic difference between the rich and the poor in “Monstro” and shows how wealth influences the character of a person and how they live day by day. Diaz argues that the wealthy are immune to the different harms which the poor are more at risk of. He shows this with Alex.
In the article "In Search of Identity in Cisneros 's The House on Mango Street” Maria Elena de Valdes describes Esperanza as “a young girl surrounded by examples of abused, defeated, worn-out women, but the woman she wants to be must be free’’ (de Valdes). Esperanza desires to be like the woman in the movies “with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel” (88). Esperanza witnesses the abuse of her female neighbors by their husbands and wants to become sexually independent, not subjugated by any man. Esperanza does not want to “grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain” (87). After dinner, Esperanza “leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate,” (89) revealing her aspiration to be strong and independent.
As a child, he is burdened with worry for his mother because she is not near him for many formidable years of his life. He is troubled by a perceived lack of love from his father, grandmother, and many members of his family still residing in Honduras. Enrique experiences the pressures of living within a low economic status when Lourdes is unable to send a sufficient amount of money for his livelihood. In later years, Enrique uses drug use as a coping mechanism and cannot release the stronghold that drugs have in his life so much so that he still uses drugs today. Enrique is also plagued with the increasing violence in his area.
The House on Mango Street is set in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood. Author Sandra Cisneros creates an atypical, yet easily digestible world for the reader to experience while learning about Esperanza’s childhood. The culture of her environment influences Esperanza’s development as she becomes a young woman, and contributes to the book’s driving theme of self-empowerment. Mango Street is the source of Esperanza’s growth through her childhood, and it hides sadness and longing underneath stereotypes of Hispanic people. The characters that live in the broken-down neighborhood all seem to represent pigeonholed views of Latino individuals.
In society, there are those who are highly regarded, and those who are looked down upon. This system displays itself through exclusive gated communities. Those who are high up in society separate themselves from those who are of lower status by locking themselves in private residences. In Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, the employees of powerful companies are the most valued and live in compounds. In The Corporation by Joel Bakan, white, affluent families are the most valued and live in fantasy worlds.