Figurative Language In The House On Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros
In House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza grows up in a society in Chicago, Illinois where she is unwelcomed because of her race, gender, and poverty. While in the story Night, Elie is affected greatly by his environment living in concentration camps in World War II. In both novels, the main characters grow emotionally and mentally from the challenges they are faced. As they are characterized as innocent in the beginning of each story, their maturity process is caused by their horrible experiences which result in loss of innocence. Eventually, they find hope for happiness within their tragic experiences and then mature.
In Sandra Cisneros’, House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s yearning for freedom is supported in Darius & the Sky. Specifically, the vignette begins by saying, “you can never have too much sky” (33). Esperanza’s vision of the sky is symbolic of offering freedom and a realm filled with opportunity. Equally important, is the sky’s role in shaping Esperanza’s identity. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza uses imagery to depict how she is “a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (9).
In the novel The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros utilizes vignettes, which typically captures a single moment by using imagery, and explains a lot with not as many words to explain Esperanza’s life that shows the complex feelings relating to her childhood. Cisneros uses imagery to capture a single moment in the book many times throughout the novel. In the vignette “Bums in the Attic” (Cisneros 86), Esperanza dreams about having a house on the hill like the ones her family visits. She feels ashamed but imagines that people living on the hill have forgotten about poor people like her family. She figures out by the end that she still wants to have a house like theirs but wants to invite the bums into her attic
In the mid-1990’s, Sandra Cisneros bought a house in the historic King William neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas. She made improvements to her home and painted it purple to reflect her Tejano heritage. However, her neighbors felt that the purple did not abide by the housing regulations of the neighborhood and petitioned the local commission to force Cisneros to change the color. I believe Sandra Cisneros should be able to keep her house purple.
Identity is what makes up every individual. Some people think an identity is just their physical traits, but it is so much more. Everyone's identity is made up of their goals, thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. Within the stories, “Abuela Invents the Zero”, “The House On Mango Street”, and “The Outsiders”, there is a similar theme that shows that the characters don't know their own worth or belonging. Abuela feels like a nothing, Esperanza knows she doesn't belong there, and Ponyboy and Cherry feel separated by the stereotype.
In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, a young girl narrates her families seemingly perpetual moving. Through detailed imagery she develops a tone which communicates the families’ socio-economic status, care for one another, and vison to one day live in a house. When the narrator moves into her families’ new house on Mango Street, she states, “There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb” (Cisneros 552). The four elm trees Cisneros writes about are symbolic of the narrator and her three siblings. The young girls states there is no front yard and the trees did not grown their naturally, concluding that they did not belong there.
In “The House on Mango street,” the author Sandra Cisneros uses the literary element simile, to create specific descriptions of various characters and objects throughout the book. Esperanza starts off by describing her name and culture: “Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong”. This shows what Esperanza perceives Mexicans to be like. She herself is comparing her and relatives to the Chinese because they as women never had a chance to be free. Cisneros reveals a lot about Esperanza with this quote, because it shows that she is aware of how women are treated on Mango Street, and how it affects her and how she could be trapped there forever.
Those Who Don’t “Those Who Don’t” is a short vignette in Sandra Cisneros's novella, The House on Mango Street, although short, it carries an important theme that allows a more thorough understanding of others - Don’t judge something or someone based on the current info, things can be surprisingly different than you imagined. Esperanza lives in a neighborhood where people see them as dangerous people because of the area. Cisnero develops this theme by using a family who, accidentally, stumbles into Esperanza’s neighborhood. She reinforces the theme by using descriptive words and Esperanza’s own perspective.
The House on Mango Street Essay Opportunities and social class are all seen in society, there are many different opportunities for many different people, and your social class can reflect your opportunities. In the book, The House On Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza was born into a large family and is represented in the lower class. Throughout her life, Esperanza and her family have moved around and have never owned their own house, Esperanza has always dreamed of them owning their own house. One day she thought her dream was coming true but the house was far from what she expected. There are numerous ways the author, Cisneros, uses tone and syntax to emphasize opportunity and social class.
Biography of Sandra Cisneros Sandra Cisneros, the author of “The House on Mango Street,” was born on December 20, 1954. Sandra grew up within a Mexican family with a large number of siblings. At a young age, she had to experience moving to different locations several times. Since she was relocating more than once, it brought a great deal of frustration to her.
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.
I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free.” (Cisneros 110). This develops the literary device of symbolism and makes readers understand how much Esperanza sees her house and Mango Street.
Throughout The House on Mango Street, characters struggle to actualize their dreams of a meaningful life. Author Sandra Cisneros illustrates this theme through her inclusion of windows as a symbol for a longing of another life. In the novel The House on Mango Street, windows represent the book and it’s theme of struggling for satisfaction in life by acting both as a border to another life and a translucent gateway to the character’s hopes. Windows act as a border to the life the characters long for but are incapable of achieving. Esperanza tells her great-grandmother’s story in which she is whisked away from her previously eventful life only to “[look] out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” because “she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be” (Cisneros 11).
Symbolism is the representation of an abstract concept through the use of a concrete object, and it is a way of bringing subtext to an otherwise one-dimensional story. Several symbols can be found in "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros, some of the most central being shoes, women looking out windows, and trees. It is through the use of these symbols that Cisneros creates a coming-of-age story, showing the different aspects of growing up as a young Latina girl. To begin with, shoes are a recurring symbol in “Mango Street”.
In the series of vignettes The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros details the life of main character Esperanza, a young girl living in a barrio of Chicago. As Esperanza tells the reader about her experiences in her day to day life, the reader hears about her struggles and dreams, her hopes and expectations in life and how these affect her. Being a young girl, Esperanza holds naivety and hope for the world, not having experienced many mature situations or society yet, and since she is going through the time in her life when she begins experiencing these issues, we see her heartbreak and the world she knew shatter. For example, when Esperanza and her family move to Mango Street, as our story kicks off, her parents would often talk about the life that they would get when they win the lottery, like having “A real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked.
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