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Similarities Between The House On Mango Street And To Kill A Mockingbird

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Recommended: The impact of rape culture

Parsa Hazegh
Mr. Johnson
English 1
6 November 2014
Esperanza, Melinda and Scout: Sexual Assault and Maturity
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Speak by Laurie H. Anderson and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee are diversely rich books that contain similar themes for their protagonist. The protagonist of the three stories are Esperanza Codero, a 12 year old Chicana girl living in poor Chicago, Melinda Sordino, a 9th grader dealing with post-rape depression in Syracuse, New York and Jean Louise Finch, a young girl living in pre-civil rights depression era Maycomb county in Alabama. Each with unique backgrounds, they share the similar theme of dealing with or encountering a sexual assault that tests their beliefs and causes them to …show more content…

During the story, she learns more about female sexuality and later rejects sex but focuses on more important things like her community and family. During this time she encounters a sexual assault by a red clown who kisses her forcefully. Here is a quote in which Esperanza encounters a sexual assault of a red clown trying to kiss her, with her blaming her friend Sally for not being there: “Why didnt you tell them to leave me alone? The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine” (Cisneros 100). Esperanza accuses Sally due to her lack in returning after she goes with a boy who is older than her, but the accusation is deeper than she expects. Esperanza is angry that girls project that kissing goes hand in hand with love. "I love you, Spanish girl" is a scary reminder to Esperanza and that the image of sex that's portrayed in culture is being misrepresented to girls. Esperanza understands that men do not change, and that women need to help one another to get through tough times. At the end of the story, Esperanza becomes an important figure for women’s help in her

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How Is Esperanza Portrayed In The House On Mango Street

697 Words | 3 Pages

Esperanza, as shown in multiple ways, does not agree with the social hierarchy between men and women in her town. Men would beat their wives and daughters, abuse innocent girls walking down the street, and keep boundaries on women as though they were objects. Women were constantly being oppressed by these roles and Esperanza experienced this unfortunate feeling at a very young age. Sally, another female character, took Esperanza to a carnival. Later in the evening, Sally told Esperanza to wait by the red clowns so they could head home.

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Esperanza's 'Illusions In The House On Mango Street'

408 Words | 2 Pages

1. Esperanza doesn’t go with her family on their Sunday outings because she is ashamed. She doesn’t want to be starting out of a window like hungry people. 2. The metaphor that is used to represent the separation between the rich and the poor is that the rich will have their own big houses.

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The Window In Esperanza's The House On Mango Street

1445 Words | 6 Pages

Still Esperanza does not get what is going on at this point. She is still so naïve and innocent. Sometimes the reader forgets how young she actually is because of the things she is going through at such a young age. Her mind and her decisions are moving at a faster pace, but she is still so blind to the world.

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Change In The House On Mango Street

995 Words | 4 Pages

According to the Census Bureau statistic, did you know that the dropout rate for Latinas ages 16 to 24 is 30 percent, compared with 12.9 percent for blacks and 8.2 percent for whites? The culture in the novel that we read believed that women need to get married and stay at home rather than be in school and become something greater than a housekeeper or just a stay-at-home mom. This essay will be talking about how our main character Esperanza has changed or evolved by the usage of words in the novel and Esperanza’s actions. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza starts out as a weak person who only knows what the community says or teaches, and progresses as life moves on and becomes a much stronger individual, which is shown

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The Theme Of Innocence In The Monkey Garden

94 Words | 1 Pages

In the vignette “The Monkey Garden”, Cisneros continues the theme of losing one’s innocence through imagery. Being one of the last vignettes, the reader knows the struggles like losing one’s innocence and feeling shameful that Esperanza continues to experience throughout the novel. Cisneros continues these themes when Sally is quite willingly tricked into kissing a couple of friends. Esperanza attempts to come to her rescue; however, Sally doesn’t want to be saved. Since Sally has completely thrown away her innocence by this point, Esperanza in turn feels shameful because of her still abundant innocence.

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Comparing Esperanza And The House On Mango Street By Sandra Cineros

2079 Words | 9 Pages

And he doesn't let her look out the window.” - Chapter 40. Men were way more superior than women in Esperanza’s case. Esperanza, not wanting to be one of the women who end up in a locked room, has to make something useful of herself so that she can stand upon her feet in the future and be independent. Despite Esperanza living in an environment where the belief of getting into a marriage is the only way women to get their lives figured out, she chose to not do that and chose to be independent.

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The Monkey Garden Cisneros Analysis

856 Words | 4 Pages

By incorporating a similar language in “The Monkey Garden” one can see there is a reason for Esperanza’s banishment too. In this chapter Esperanza does not want to play with the boys, “[she says], Sally, come on, but she wouldn’t… so [she] just left” (Cisneros 96). She denies the fact that the boys have control over her and Sally, but in her society, this is not a problem. Esperanza is the only one who does not want to kiss or play with the boys; her decision to not play with them is disapproved so she is excluded.

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Loss Of Innocence In The House On Mango Street

572 Words | 3 Pages

The novel The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros was a fictional novel written in 1984. This novel shows the struggle of a young girl named Esperanza who was trying to mature to quick. Esperanza is a twelve year old girl who began to lose her innocence because she was trying to mature before she was meant to. The main conflict was Esperanza began to act like an adult, but yet she was still just a young girl, and because of her actions she experienced a loss of innocence. Through the use of syntax, Cisneros portrays the message that trying to mature too early will result in loss of innocence.

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Sexism In The House On Mango Street

1204 Words | 5 Pages

These problems coming to light through the many women Esperanza looks up to, drive her to rise above her obstacles, and become more than just another poorly treated woman. Despite the variety of girls in the neighborhood, one of Esperanza’s closest friends ends up being Sally, who has moved from one abusive home to the next. Sally’s father was a very strict man and she constantly disobeyed him once out of his sight. Whenever Sally is caught dressing “provocative” or acting “too old” her father decides to teach her a lesson.

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Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird Book And Movie

1138 Words | 5 Pages

From Paper to Film There is no comparison when it comes to a fresh, homemade Thanksgiving dinner made by a loved one, to a dish from even a five star restaurant. What makes a meal exceptional, are the intricacies of the preparation of the feast. Removing the love and details of preparing a homemade meal results in the loss of many key components of the final product. This is similar to the loss of important details from a movie compared to the novel that often misses key messages from the original author.

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House On Mango Street Culture

437 Words | 2 Pages

The male-dominated society that Esperanza grows up in forces the idea that women are weak and should stay locked in their houses while men go off to work. The men are immoral and seedy, as expressed in the chapter in which a homeless man leers and asks for a kiss from the little girls. Esperanza experiences the evil of her community when she is sexually assaulted, causing her to lose her previous desire to explore her sexuality. Before being assaulted, she wanted to be “beautiful and cruel” like her friend Sally, because Sally was what she understood to be a perfect woman. However, after her rape she decides that she needs to discover her own identity for herself.

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The House On Mango Street

1224 Words | 5 Pages

In the chapter “Red Clowns”, Esperanza experiences her first sexual encounter, although it was not what she thought it would be. She finds herself being sexually assaulted. Forcibly introduced into the adult world, Esperanza learn that fantasies are not always what they are said to be. Esperanza states, “They all lied. All the books and magazine, everything that told it wrong.

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Poverty In The House On Mango Street

1117 Words | 5 Pages

Esperanza is often humiliated not only by where she lives, but also by her physical appearance, hence causing a restriction in her climb to a higher social class. Esperanza is frequently ashamed of her family’s broken-down house in an urban, poor

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The House On Mango Street Adulthood Analysis

1212 Words | 5 Pages

She wants to overcome her childish tendencies and transition into womanhood. When Esperanza sees Sire’s girlfriend her interest in Sire and his relationship increases. She even begins to imagine what it would feel like to have a boyfriend. “I want to sit bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt” (73). This represents the arrival of puberty, which is demonstrated by Esperanza’s desire to behave in a grown-up way.

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House On Mango Street Compare And Contrast Essay

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.

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