The House On Mango Street is written in a series of vignettes to emphasize essential events in Esperanza's life. Each of these contain important literary choices made by Cisneros to emphasize different things of importance in the book. The vignette “Four Skinny Trees” is extremely prominent in the book. Here, the use of symbolism, personification, and diction illustrates Esperanza's growth from a child to a young women, and the strength she has.
The setting of the novel is a poor latino neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago during the 1980s. All of Esperanza’s vignettes take place in a time- span of about one year. Esperanza reflects back onto memories of some of her older, previous houses but for the most part, the majority of her vignettes are written memories from her house on Mango Street. Esperanza narrates her own stories, struggles, and observations as she grows up trying to find her place in the world.
In the book, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is portrayed as a young innocent girl that drastically changes over the course of the book. Esperanza is new to mango street and encounters many challenges but also positive experiences that she is able to take away from mango street. In order for Esperanza to transform as a human it was inevitable for her to face the struggles on mango street. As Esperanza matures throughout the novel she experiences three major developments that shape her future through the awakening of maturity, responsibility and her awakening of her interest in poetry.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros contained a variety of complex themes and ideas packed into short vignettes. In the close reading Kalen focused on the vignette “The Monkey Garden” and brought forward the idea of different forms of freedom. For Esperanza and some of the other characters in the book, the monkey garden “was their own personal Neverland or Garden of Eden.” The freedom or isolation from the outside world, made the children feel as they could forever remain kids and escape their fears. After reading the close reading I realized Sally never viewed the world the same as Esperanza.
Writers can enrich their story in many ways. The use of conflict, foreshadowing, and personification can be used by authors to deepen their story. The short stories “The Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell, “The Chaser” by John Collier, and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury all contain evidence of these literary devices. Dispute, foreshadowing, and personification are all elements that enhance short stories.
The theme itself can represented by the references to teenage struggles, sexual assault, and poverty. Esperanza, the main protagonist, is a Mexican/America girl who tells the reader that she would like a home to call her own as she is not entirely satisfied with the place her family calls home. In the vignette, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza states, “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to.
Esperanza’s house on Mango Street is not the house she dreamed on when she lived on Loomis Street, not the kind of house her parent’s talked about, not the house she wanted. Her house on Mango Street is a small, red house with even smaller stairs leading to the door. The brick are falling out of place and to get inside, one must shove the door, swollen like Esperanza’s feet in later vignettes, open. Once inside, where you are never very far from someone else, there are small hallway stairs that lead to the only one shared bedroom and bathroom. This house is just, “For the time being,”[5] Esperanza claims, for this is nothing like the house she longs for.
This ideal heaven that Esperanza's family dream about is what gives them hope to keep going everyday, although it may not be attainable. Since Esperanza does not know this, though, when they get to their new house on Mango Street, she sees it is nothing like that despite the depictions of a house she was told. This contributes to a cynical, jaded attitude that is sad to see someone so young have, as we see when she her parents tell her that this new house is temporary, and she tells the reader: “But I know how those things go” (Cisneros, 5). Here, although the house of dreams help her parents keep surviving, it gives haunts Esperanza as an unobtainable myth.
Esteban throughout the book throws multiple temper tantrums in which he smashes things and in one instance responds violently towards his wife and daughter. Esteban's abuse to his wife has significance to the story as a whole because it causes her to never speak to him again. Early on in the book Esteban rapes many of the young tenants on his Hacienda. This significantly affects the plot because one of the grandchildren who was born from a son of one of the rapes, Esteban garcia, would go on to cause a great amount of pain to the trueba
“Identity cannot be found or fabricated, but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go”- by Doug Cooper. Circumstances, experiences and society are factors in an individual’s life which contribute to the formation of their identity. Identity is not found, instead, it’s made by conflicts, hurdles, societal pressures and obstacles in one’s life which come together in harmony to create one’s identity in its purest form. How individuals act and respond to challenging circumstances determines their values, goals and beliefs, thus, forms them as a whole. In the text name “The Shining Houses” by Alice Munro, a character named Mary experiences stresses in her life which attribute to not only her individuality but to her development as a character as the story progresses.
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
In Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits, Esteban Trueba is the only character to survive the entirety of the novel. In the commencement, the reader witnesses how his rigorous childhood plays a key role in foreshadowing how his violence develops the themes throughout the novel. Furthermore, the reader additionally grows with Esteban as an adult, and witness how his volatile relationships with characters conform the theme of society and class. Lastly, throughout the novel he plays a central role as the antagonist in numerous conflicts, which develop the recurring theme of violence. From a zealous young man, to the main antagonist in various conflicts; examining Esteban’s growth throughout the novel involves the reader in the core of Esteban,
Picture being so scared walking home alone that you had to carry a switchblade around. In The Outsiders Ponyboy, and his friends who are called the greasers, live in a violent, bad neighborhood without their parents. They are against a group called Socs who are a higher class, in a much better neighborhood and they jump the greasers all the time out of nowhere. The setting causes the characters to be tense and anxious, for example, Johnny and Darry who can never calm down and loosen up. They always have to look behind their back everywhere they go.
La Rinconada, Peru, is a place of work, disappointment, and struggle. This town is the home to a gold mine that is now rarely visited - mostly by government officials and personnel from the mining company. This town, high in the Andes, is a place of little water, little food, and little hope. From this description, a reader would have no idea that this forsaken place could harbor any beauty. However, Marie Arana in the literary journalism piece, “In La Rinconada, Peru, Searching for Beauty in Ugliness,” finds that there can actually be beauty in places such as La Riconada.
In the book The Outsiders by the author S.E. Hilton, it’s hard to live in such a place. The setting of The Outsiders takes place in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. “Greasers,¨ a group of friends of Ponyboy, Johnny and the others are having a tough time in the a town in Oklahoma. The settings is a major part of changing the characters, to also affect the story. It’s hard being a “Greaser” in Oklahoma in the 1960’s.
