Materialism In The House On Mango Street

Esperanza, which means hope in Spanish, is the name of the main character in the House on Mango Street. Throughout the first chapter of the story, Esperanza tells the reader about her past experiences in all the houses she and her family has lived in since she was born. Esperanza recalls how each house was different. Alike many children Esperanza’s age, can be very materialistic. Esperanza wants a nice house and these feelings makes her ashamed of her family and where they live. Therefore, Esperanza becomes materialistic, insecure and dreamy about her family’s future. Materialistic is a word defined in the dictionary as such “excessively concerned with physical comforts or the acquisition of wealth and material possessions, rather than spiritual,

Dream about little things such as what they will eat tomorrow. Dreaming can be a good, but not so good at the same time. Dreaming can create people inside of us which aren’t thankful about their life because they want more and more than what they already have. Esperanza dreamed about having that house her family kept talking about, and it made her be ungrateful about what she does have. “One reason materialistic people are so unhappy is that they often lack gratitude” (Wallace). Gratitude is the quality of being thankful and many materialistic people are like that because they are not fully thankful of what they do have and they are just thinking about what else they can have to make themselves a happy person. Esperanza is not having gratitude about what her parents could get for her family and she is instead complaining and hoping every time they move, it is to that so talk house. She is certainly not recognizing the fact that her parents may have work their hardest to afford the house. Kids, like Esperanza, are not conscious enough of financial situations. “Relatively poor teenagers ironically tend to be more materialistic than wealthy ones” (Carter). When kids are poor, aware of what other people wear or have and they don’t see themselves having such items, they can try to quell that certain insecurity in them by striving for wealth and a lot of fancy stuff. At a certain age, this situation could become very problematic because