House On Mango Street Symbols

Symbolism, as defined by the New Oxford American dictionary, is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the book “The House on Mango Street” written by Sandra Cisneros the main character Esperanza goes through life, growing up in a very cultural household. Cisneros uses symbolism to show sexism, her feeling like she didn’t belong, and negative aspects in her culture. In this book she shows many examples of cultural sexism. In the vignette “My Name” a symbols she uses to show sexism is are the chandelier and the window. In the sentence “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” (Cisneros 18) and in the sentence “Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier” (Cisneros 15). The chandelier represents that she is a possession or an object, not a person. The window represents how women are kept in isolation, unlike men who could do what they wanted too and control the women. Men treated them like objects even though they weren’t. The author used these as symbols for sexism because she was treated differently because she was a woman and she served the men. Therefore, she showed many examples of sexism in this vignette and in the entire book and this

In the sentence “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine.” The symbols pointy elbows and skinny necks shows that she feels like she doesn’t belong, like a misfit, like four skinny trees by the city. Also in the sentence “Four who grew despite concrete”(Cisneros 18) the symbol, concrete, demonstrates that she is still in her culture even though she wants to fight it. The authors background also represents this because she moved a lot and she never felt like she fit is as a child. This matters because she should feel like she belongs and she also feels like this because she is a teenanger and most teenangers feel like they don’t