The House On Mango Street is written in a series of vignettes to emphasize essential events in Esperanza's life. Each of these contain important literary choices made by Cisneros to emphasize different things of importance in the book. The vignette “Four Skinny Trees” is extremely prominent in the book. Here, the use of symbolism, personification, and diction illustrates Esperanza's growth from a child to a young women, and the strength she has.
The two characters, Esperanza and Marin, from the book, “The House on Mango Street”, both want more in life, but must face many obstacles to get that. The main character, Esperanza, has moved from many different houses with her family for years. She is currently living in the house on Mango street. Even though Mango street is a much better house than the houses she has lived in the past she wants more.
Loss of Innocence In the book The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros demonstrates in her writing how a child can be forced to mature too rapidly. Esperanza encounters sexism, racism, and discrimination towards the poor that impacted her paradigm of the world around her. The motif occurring throughout the novel is how a young girl must become a woman before they are ready. In the chapter “The Monkey Garden”, Esperanza makes one of her final transitions into the woman, her environment forces her to be, this is shown by the change of her opinion of her shoes, the realization of woman accepting manipulation by men, and her loss of childlike interest in the Monkey Garden.
In the story a Genetics of justice the characters were trapped by a genetic curse of fear. There fear was of the Dominican republic leader at the time Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Trujillo was a crooked leader and because of it a lot of his people to feared him. In particular famous author Julia alvarez.
Esperanza and her family are always moving because they do not have much money, but they finally moved into a house on Mango Street where they “Don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise” (703). Although it sounded like a nice place, when a nun from her school saw where Esperanza lived, she said, “You live there?” (703). That made Esperanza feel like nothing and made her realize she needs a real house, one that is really nice. Esperanza wants to change her life and make the best of what she has.
Soto’s “Small Town with One Road” is a poem that deeply touches upon the issues of Latin Americans stuck in small towns. With the use of literary devices such as similes and imagery it illustrates the deep pain in the townspeople’s hearts. In line 24 the speaker thinks “Papa’s fields wavered like a mirage”(Soto “Small Town”) which shows the illusion of a perfect life in small town fading away. This is a simile that hints at the imperfections hidden in the small town of the speaker’s upbringing. The imagery in the poem such as "And its black strip of highway, big-eyed With rabbits that won't get across"(Soto “Small Town” 2-3) paint a picture of what the quality of life is in the town.
She talks about all the odd handyman jobs he worked. Hernández talks about her father’s drinking problems and her struggles to understand her father. As she got older Hernandez began to understand her parents and in her father’s case began to try and come to terms with how she was treated and accept and forgive. Hernandez grew up in a home where her parents wanted what was best for her, yet wanted her to conform to her ethnic culture. Her whole life Hernandez was told what she should do and how to be Hispanic.
Everyone is affected by life’s circumstances. The responses to those experiences can have a positive or negative outcome in one’s future. In Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, the protagonist, Esperanza, gives us her views on life, how she views herself, and she views her future. Not only does she give her perspective throughout the story, she tells us of the numerous experiences that she grows through. These experiences have an impact on her, creating new emotions and new adult like perspectives she has never faced before.
The House on Mango Street is set in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood. Author Sandra Cisneros creates an atypical, yet easily digestible world for the reader to experience while learning about Esperanza’s childhood. The culture of her environment influences Esperanza’s development as she becomes a young woman, and contributes to the book’s driving theme of self-empowerment. Mango Street is the source of Esperanza’s growth through her childhood, and it hides sadness and longing underneath stereotypes of Hispanic people. The characters that live in the broken-down neighborhood all seem to represent pigeonholed views of Latino individuals.
In the book, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is portrayed as a young innocent girl that drastically changes over the course of the book. Esperanza is new to mango street and encounters many challenges but also positive experiences that she is able to take away from mango street. In order for Esperanza to transform as a human it was inevitable for her to face the struggles on mango street. As Esperanza matures throughout the novel she experiences three major developments that shape her future through the awakening of maturity, responsibility and her awakening of her interest in poetry.
Esperanza’s Odyssey Esperanza ’s journey of self-identification is apparent in the novel “House on Mango Street”. Her hopes of leaving the barrio were clearly shown in different vignettes: “House on Mango Street”, “Bums in the attic”, “Beautiful and Cruel”, and so on. Her process of self-identification will entail her realizing that she is growing more mature, figuring out her sexuality, and understanding her culture as a Latina.
Persepolis: The coming of age Persepolis was created by Marjane Satrapi to explain the details of her life. She had many events that occurred over time throughout the younger years of her life which she wrote in the form of a graphic novel. One of the most important things that took place in her life was her experience and how it helped her to grow faster mentally. Many events contributed to her mental growth as most of them she describes come from the war. Out of the many contributions one has a larger explanation.
Throughout The House on Mango Street, characters struggle to actualize their dreams of a meaningful life. Author Sandra Cisneros illustrates this theme through her inclusion of windows as a symbol for a longing of another life. In the novel The House on Mango Street, windows represent the book and it’s theme of struggling for satisfaction in life by acting both as a border to another life and a translucent gateway to the character’s hopes. Windows act as a border to the life the characters long for but are incapable of achieving. Esperanza tells her great-grandmother’s story in which she is whisked away from her previously eventful life only to “[look] out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” because “she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be” (Cisneros 11).
In the House on Mango Street, Esperanza is seeking for an identity of her own. In her current neighborhood, she struggles with economic, cultural, and gender based barriers to personal growth, and she believes that changing her surroundings is her solution; however, she realizes that to discover her identity, her ultimate destination is a home in the heart. The house on Mango Street was one that was the opposite of what Esperanza had dreamt her entire life. The house is, “…small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you 'd think they were holding their breath... bricks...crumbling in places, and the front door...so swollen you have to push hard to get in". (Cisneros 5)
The House on Mango Street is a touching and timeless tale told in short vignettes. It tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Her life, and the lives of the people around her, are laid bare to the readers in this touching novella. In the beginning, Esperanza is not accepting of herself. Her family’s poor financial situation, the sadness of the people around her, and the problems she faces in her daily life make her very cynical.
