House On Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros

Moshe Dayan once said, “Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” Freedom gives you the ability to live and take up space for yourself, rather than being in the control of others. Sandra Cisneros renders this idea perfectly in the novella, A House on Mango Street, where the protagonist, Esperanza, has two lives constantly in mind: one where she’s free and can take pride in herself, and the other where she’s not. Unfortunately, while the second life is her current reality, that doesn’t stop Esperanza from dreaming for more. This aspiration for a better reality is often embodied in a house, where she’s unconstrained by expectations and loves herself and her life, living in a home she feels truly deserving of, something she can look forward to. This

At one point towards the end of the vignette, Esperanza meets a nun in her neighborhood who asks about her residence on Mango Street, and is surprised at hearing her answer. The House on Mango Street states, “‘You live there?’...the way she said it made me feel like nothing...I knew I had to have a house. A real house in the. One that I could point to. But this isn’t it.” (Cisneros 5). In this scene, the nun is shocked when she sees the state of Esperanza’s house, and her reaction brings Esperanza into a place of shame. This interaction was a defining moment in the story, as it was when she decided she needed to have a house with dignity, one she wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell people about. Yes, it’s still a house, and she knows to be grateful for it, but Esperanza knows she can’t represent something and live somewhere that doesn’t represent her — she doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with people making assumptions her whole life based on where she lives. But why was the nun so stunned by Esperanza’s response in the first place? What made her stereotype of Esperanza so horribly that it stuck with her for the rest of her life? In the same vignette, the text states, “But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at

Through the use of this symbolism, the reader is able to better understand these experiences, and get to know Esperanza. More than that, however, the reader gets to know Esperanza’s dreams and aspirations and how she believes they can be achieved through getting a new house. Towards the end of the novella, it becomes clear that the people around her have taken notice of her potential to succeed and be successful outside of Mango Street, and though they have no doubt in their minds that she can do it, they need to know that she’ll come back for them after, that she won’t forget where she came from and the people there that she cares about. Whether or not they’re right about her, or if she’ll remember them, readers will never know. However, there’s one thing that everyone is sure of — Esperanza will always keep dreaming for that greater future, that greater escape from restriction to freedom — until she gets