Four Skinny Trees In The House On Mango Street

In the book, The House On Mango Street, symbolism is evident by the way the author writes. The symbols are used to express the way a character feels or to connect one thing to another. One of these major symbols are trees. Esperanza looks at different trees throughout the book in chapters “Four Skinny Trees” and “Meme Ortiz”, and claims them being a reflection of her. Trees symbolize a feeling of not belonging, finding strength, persevering, and doing something for the foundation of the future.

When Esperanza moves in to Mango Street, she feels like she doesn’t belong there. The four skinny trees in her backyard, Esperanza describes, look apart from the others, like they don’t belong there either. In Building 429’s song “this is not where I belong”, the share the same feeling as Esperanza in the line, “All I know is I’m not home yet. This is not where I belong.” They feel like they don’t belong or that their home is somewhere else. Esperanza can connect to this, moving from Paulina to Keeler to Loomis and then Mango Street, she still feels like she doesn’t belong there and that she will still look for a Home.

The trees symbolize this as well, in the chapter “Meme Ortiz”, even though Meme falls from a tree and hurts herself, Esperanza identifies that Meme’s trees are bigger than the ones in Esperanza’s yard, but were once little trees like hers. In the song by The Carpenters, “Strength of a Woman”, they sing “sometimes it takes the strength of a woman”. Esperanza’s notice of Meme’s trees flourishing makes herself think that she might grow up to be as strong and independent one day. The line also connects because Esperanza learns a lot from the women in her neighborhood about strength and how much they’ve been through, and also how much the tree has been through, and sometimes, it does take the strength of a woman to reach her