Julia Gerson
Block 3
Ms. Evans
1/9/22
How To Live Your Life Without Being Trapped By Expectations
How should I live my life? This is a question that has been discussed since the beginning of the semester and though there is no concrete answer, there are some concepts that are found in the novels that have been discussed in class so far. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng showed Lydia and her family’s lives before and after her death. The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros told the story of Esperanza growing up and recognizing the realities and expectations of the world around her. Though the overall plot of these two novels are entirely different they both show context of how to live your life by showing how each character decided
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Her thoughts show that she has decided how to live her life so that she is happy and no longer constantly feels the pressure to be perfect all the time, “She will begin again. She will tell her mother: enough. She will take down the posters and put away the books. If she fails physics, if she never becomes a doctor, it will be all right. She will tell her mother that… She will give her father back his necklace and his book. She will stop holding the silent phone to her ear; she will stop pretending to be someone she is not. From now on, she will do what she wants” (Ng 274-275). Lydia’s new thought process on how to change her life so she can live it better shows a plan that has elements that can be applied to everyone's lives and how they can live it to the fullest. Esperanza on the other hand seems to know exactly what she wants from the beginning and does not waste years trying to become something that she does not want just to please others. She has a dream for herself and she knows what she wants from her life, “Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all on my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty petunias” (Cisneros 108) Her future home that she has created in her mind she uses as motivation to do what she can to get her dream home. She knows what she wants from her life and she will do whatever she can to achieve it. Lydia reaches a similar thought process to Esperanza in the end of how she should live her life. Unfortunately she spent so long living her life how others wanted her to that she was never able to live the life she