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Womens expectations in literature
Gender role changes
Treatment of women in literature
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Womens expectations in literature
Gender role changes
Treatment of women in literature
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Characters Comparison/Contrast Essay Intro: Include one or more sentences summarizing each story and describing each character. Esperanza and house on mango street: Esperanza is a young girl who lives for a year on mango street and gradually grows into a mature young woman by a series of encounters and situations on her quest to learn more about female sexuality and later conclusion on rejecting sex as a form of escaping reality but rather focus on the importance of community and family. At the end of the book, Esperanza becomes a important figure for women’s help in her community and proves herself as an artist and writer through her analysis and observations through her writings.
Mitchell Curtis English 9 / Period 6 Mr.Boyat 17 October 2016 Three Influential Characters in The House on Mango Street In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the story is developed through the eyes of a young girl Esperanza. She learns about the realities of life in a house that she recently moved into. There are many characters that are written as she learns about her new neighborhood. The three most influential characters in the novel are Sally, her Mother ,and Marin.
Esperanza does not realize that by her doing those things, just like Mamacita she is stopping her growth. If Esperanza would have kept with that constant cycle and not accepted her home and what she was
She dreams “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever” (707). Esperanza believes that she can change the way she is living and live a better life. She is trying to get a good education to become a more improved and intelligent person so one day she does not have to be poor.
Esperanza experiences a sense of beauty and attention when she is strolling through the streets in high heels with Lucy and Rachel receiving comments such as “ ladies, lead me to heaven” (Cisneros 41) from a boy and jealousy from six girls who watch as they walk by. Later, Esperanza meets Rafaela who happened to be trapped in her house because of her husband and this probably has Esperanza thinking of what her future could be like with a husband. A short while after Esperanza befriends a girl named Sally who happens to be the prettiest girl her age at school. Sally receives all the attention from the boys but is beaten by her father at home because of her beauty. All of these experiences beginning with Esperanza not worried about boys to getting attention from boys is a key and then learning that your beauty can get you in trouble ultimately confuses Esperanza’s views on what to believe about
The male-dominated society that Esperanza grows up in forces the idea that women are weak and should stay locked in their houses while men go off to work. The men are immoral and seedy, as expressed in the chapter in which a homeless man leers and asks for a kiss from the little girls. Esperanza experiences the evil of her community when she is sexually assaulted, causing her to lose her previous desire to explore her sexuality. Before being assaulted, she wanted to be “beautiful and cruel” like her friend Sally, because Sally was what she understood to be a perfect woman. However, after her rape she decides that she needs to discover her own identity for herself.
In the House on Mango Street and The Grapes of Wrath the two main characters have grown in many similar and different ways. Esperanza is a Mexican American girl who grows up in Latin American based neighborhood where she learns new things every day. Tom Joad has just been released from the McAlester State Penitentiary where he just served 4 years. Esperanza and Tom Joad are two main characters from separate stories who have changed for the better of themselves with many similarities and differences along the way. Tom Joad starts off the novel as a person that only cares for himself, his wellbeing, and self-centered.
Esperanza’s interest is writing poem, appears in many of the chapters where it explains a way of bonding with her community by sharing poems with one another. Because Esperanza has become a writer her observations strengthen throughout the novel. One example of how she matures through writing is in the beginning of the book she told stories that were obviously meant for a younger audiences but through the middle of the book she started to use more observation based upon what she saw which helped develop the story more for the reader. This change shows that she is becoming an artist, and also that she is starting to distance herself from her community, since she focuses more on capturing experiences than living through them, she starts to further her self from interaction and focuses more on observation of the people around her. By the end of The House on Mango Street, she knows that she underwent a huge transformation and her relationship with mango st is starting to weaken.
Esperanza is often humiliated not only by where she lives, but also by her physical appearance, hence causing a restriction in her climb to a higher social class. Esperanza is frequently ashamed of her family’s broken-down house in an urban, poor
As a child, Esperanza wants only escape from mango Street. Her dream of independents and "self-definition" also means leaving her family behind without any responsibilities to her family. Throughout the book, her has also faced some situation where is feels ashamed to be part of the Mango Street community and in some instances refuses to admit she has anything to do with mango street. At the beginning of the book near the earlier chapters, Esperanza feels very insecure about herself in general along with the house that she lives in. As mentioned before, she doesn’t want to discuss her name nor where she lives.
It can also be inferred that she is physically weak and malnourished. Finally, Esperanza will do anything to get what she wants. This means that she is extremely determined. Esperanza is a very timid little girl. After pestering her mother to give her a note to eat in the canteen, she is seemingly unable to answer the nun who asks what she is doing there, instead meekly holding up the note and scurrying upstairs to Sister Superior.
“I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I 'm me. One day I 'll jump out of my skin. I 'll shake the sky like a hundred violins.” (Cisnero 73) This is what Esperanza was determined to express during her journey of finding a place where she can be herself.
“In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in (Cisneros 13).” This quote is a significant part of the story because it shows how Esperanza truly feels about herself and her family. She thinks that because she is poor and lives and a bad neighborhood people move away from her family. Esperanza doesn’t think very much of her or her family at all. She thinks that it is because of their race that people do not want to be near them.
She wants to overcome her childish tendencies and transition into womanhood. When Esperanza sees Sire’s girlfriend her interest in Sire and his relationship increases. She even begins to imagine what it would feel like to have a boyfriend. “I want to sit bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt” (73). This represents the arrival of puberty, which is demonstrated by Esperanza’s desire to behave in a grown-up way.
Esperanza says that she will come back, she will come back for “the ones I left behind... the ones who cannot out”. (Cisneros 110). Esperanza is able to go through a change and accept who she is through her community and her family. She is able to use her situation to empower herself, and to be hopeful in her own