ipl-logo

Fool's Fate: The House On Mango Street

713 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racial stereotypes

Summer Assignment Robin Hobb once wrote in Fool's Fate that "Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone then all you can see is what is not there anymore." (Hobb,R.n.d. "Quotes about Family". August 7,2015. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/family?page=2) Hobb tells us that we shouldn't have a fixed idea about home and we should enjoy it while we have it, because one day we may go back and not see our idea of family. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros gives us insight into an unique family, they weren't the smartest or the richest, they had to constantly move houses due to problem that they couldn't control. For instance, in listening to the podcasts you come to learn that some of the kids …show more content…

Esperanza, the narrator many times expresses how she wished she lived better. Either in a different community or had different people living around her. Esperanza said "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. “They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” (Cisneros, Sandra. “The House on Mango Street.” Vintage Books, 2013-04-30. iBooks.) Esperanza knows the truth and that most people in her area wouldn't do such a thing, she just wishes that people wouldn't think that. She felt liked the community she lived in was looked down upon because of the people who lived there. Likewise, Sam and Sydne on Radio Rookies experience something like Esperanza but not only in their community but at school too. Sam and Sydne live in New York and being Mexican wasn't easy for them, she would try to stay true to her culture at school but people would get mad at her. Sam went home and interviewed her brother and asked him little brother why he doesn't want to speak Spanish and he simply responded with an " I don't like it."She was confused because she said when she was younger there wasn't as much negativity to Latinos as there is now. "(This is America, Speak English. Narr. Sydne Brown, Sam Diaz. Radio Rookies. WYNC. WYNC. June 27, 2013. Web Site. August …show more content…

(n.d.). Midwest Raíces. Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, 24-24) So maybe Esperanza experience seeing the fear in people who drove through her neighborhood, because the people driving through didn't know what to expect or they had seen or heard negative things about Latinos. They either believed what they heard or didn't want to be the first to find out what could happen. Esperanza then takes the situation lightly by jokingly saying “But we aren’t afraid. We know the guy with the crooked eye is Davey the Baby’s brother,”(Cisneros, Sandra. “The House on Mango Street.” Vintage Books, 2013-04-30. iBooks.) If the people only knew them they would have a need to fear because they were just like

Show More
Related
919 Words | 4 Pages

Esperanza Rising Research Essay Though many who have read Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan believe that Esperanza and her mother should have stayed in Aguascalientes, Mexico, on the contrary, I believe that they were right to leave for California. If they stayed, they would have had to face several consequences, one being having to live with Esperanza’s uncle, despicable Tio Luis. At the same time, when they went to California, they did not have to leave everything behind, it was a choice they made. After all, as Esperanza herself said in the book, “Do not ever be afraid to start over.” (p. 253)

Read More
778 Words | 4 Pages

They are always talking about assortments of houses they want to live in one day and they always seem much better than the house her family is living in now on Mango Street. One of the examples that esperanza says about one of the houses she likes is ”Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and growing without a fence” (4). They constantly move around and to places that aren't nice places. It is an ongoing theme in the book that esperanza talks about always wanting to move from the places she lives. There are many houses that they think is a better fit for them, but they just don’t have the money to afford the house.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
1002 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza and her family are always moving because they do not have much money, but they finally moved into a house on Mango Street where they “Don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise” (703). Although it sounded like a nice place, when a nun from her school saw where Esperanza lived, she said, “You live there?” (703). That made Esperanza feel like nothing and made her realize she needs a real house, one that is really nice. Esperanza wants to change her life and make the best of what she has.

Read More
655 Words | 3 Pages

The claim/thesis that I have picked is that Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many of those role models in her life are in a trapped abusive life. They come from a poor family and are not the cleanest people in the town. But they have something all in common and that is that they all want a change. Some want their change in a different way than the others, some want someone else to change their life, and the others want to change their lives themselves.

Read More
1005 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza the protagonist of the novel. In the neighborhood where she lives, many people that does not know the place are afraid to get there. The fact that they would think it is a neighborhood full of criminals. "They think we are dangerous. They think they will attack them with shiny knives.

Read More
463 Words | 2 Pages

She knows she is lucky to have a less problematic family to support and her during good choices or bad decisions. Esperanza talks about the relationships of each family on Mango Street until she leaves and finds a better place. The other families on Mango Street also have it hard, but they don’t have the bond of the Esperanza’s

Read More
437 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
1134 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza acquires a sense of who she is as a young woman. These characters aid in her decided stance on gender roles and how she wants to evade them as she starts to build her own life. Through Esperanza’s narration, the darkness that correlates with the roles of women is brought into light. The gender roles found in the book are still issues today. Such ideas ruin much of society because people have yet to question and altar them.

Read More
1117 Words | 5 Pages

Many people are undermined by the drawbacks of belonging to a low socioeconomic status. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is raised in a poor, Latino community, causing her to be introduced to poverty at an early age. This introduction of poverty affects Esperanza in many ways, one including that she is unable to find success. Esperanza struggles to achieve success in life because the cycle of poverty restricts her in a position in which she cannot break free from her socioeconomic status.

Read More
1348 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
717 Words | 3 Pages

People are even afraid to come near their neighborhood, they fear that they will be attacked. The residents of Mango Street are talked about as criminals, just because of their race and their poverty. As a result of being Hispanic, Esperanza and those around her are viewed by other, higher classes, as a minority. Hispanics at that time made less money and were seen as lessers compared to people in the higher class. Higher class people believed they were superior to her.

Read More
1212 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza tries to fight this ‘childish’ fear of boys, and she doesn’t cross the street like the other girls. Esperanza attempts to get over her fear, and looks back at him, straight into his eyes. “I had to look back hard, just once, like he was glass. And I did. I did once” (72).

Read More
1095 Words | 5 Pages

However, Esperanza’s negative view of herself slowly changes as she begins to focus on her larger community and her place within it. Through this, Cisneros shows that knowing and accepting where we have come from is an important part of growing up and determining who we are. In the beginning of

Read More
1042 Words | 5 Pages

Maggard 1 Cole Maggard Johnson English 1 6 November 2014 Character compare and contrast Esperanza from House on Mango Street, Melinda from Speak, and Jean Louise from To Kill a Mockingbird, are very interesting characters that seem to not share many characteristics in each of these novels. These three girls were the main characters of their own books, and in each of these books we learned that they don’t have a lot in common. The personality that these three have just shows how different they are. Here are just a few examples that make these three girls different.

Read More

More about Fool's Fate: The House On Mango Street

Related Topics

Open Document