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Loss Of Innocence In The House On Mango Street

1405 Words6 Pages

The House on Mango Street is about a young girl named Esperanza and the different challenges she faces throughout her life. She has a big family that consists of 5 other people and has moved to different homes many times. As she moves to the house on Mango Street she is disappointed at the fact that the house was not the house of her dreams nor the one she imagined it to be. The house on Mango Street is an improvement compared to Esperanza’s previous homes, but it is still not the house she or her family dreams of, and throughout the book Esperanza feels that she doesn’t belong there. As a family of 6 people, it consists of different responsibilities including taking care of younger siblings and so Esperanza has to take care of her younger …show more content…

Most of Esperanza’s female neighbors are abused or oppressed by their fathers and husbands, so Esperanza knows that she wants to escape the male dominated society, but at the same time she has to deal with her own sexuality and her desire to be loved by men. She meets Sally who is around the same age as her but is more sexually mature than other girls and she also has an abusive father. Being a Sally’s friend, Esperanza experiences “the loss of innocence” as she describes it in the book. Esperanza’s friendship with Sally also leads her to the most traumatic experience in the book, for example, as Sally leaves her alone at a carnival Esperanza is raped. This is the moment that Esperanza’s experiences a massive impact in her life. The experience of male oppression leads Esperanza to express herself through creative ways, like, writing. This causes her to want to leave and escape Mango Street. At the end of the book, Esperanza is still in the same house, but she has matured and is confident that she is stronger than to be trapped there forever. Her writing lets her escape Mango Street emotionally, but it will also let her escape physically through education and financial independence. When she actually does leave, Esperanza promises to come back to Mango Street for people who are not strong enough to escape due to

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