Literary Analysis Essay On The House On Mango Street

Those Who Don’t “Those Who Don’t” is a short vignette in Sandra Cisneros's novella, The House on Mango Street, although short, it carries an important theme that allows a more thorough understanding of others - Don’t judge something or someone based on the current info, things can be surprisingly different than you imagined. Esperanza lives in a neighborhood where people see them as dangerous people because of the area. Cisnero develops this theme by using a family who, accidentally, stumbles into Esperanza’s neighborhood. She reinforces the theme by using descriptive words and Esperanza’s own perspective. Esperanza’s neighborhood is not the richest and cleanest neighborhood around, in fact it could be counted as run down with a gloomy atmosphere. Esperanza’s house can be described as “small and red with tight steps in front.” With the description of this house we can assume that all the other houses will be similar and with that picture in mind, “those who don’t know any better comes into our neighborhood scared” because the setting is seen as a run down neighborhood. In a run down neighborhood you assume the worse because it's not like a clean

The people that Esperanza see have thoughts such as “they think we will attack them with shiny knives” because of their brown skin color. Then according to Esperanza, “watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake” she experiences the same thing because of the setting and their fear of what people will do to them because of their skin color. Esperanza describes it as “ that is how it goes and goes” because they realize that people have experienced the feeling of going into the unknown where they feel like they don’t belong and can relate that everyone goes through it. As a result Esperanza understands the feeling they get, she understands the people who are in her