The world is not as good as it seems. We learn this in the novel The House on Mango street by Sandra Cisnero. The book takes place in a run down neighborhood located in Chicago, Illinois in the 1960’s. Esperanza is the main character. She is 14 year old girl struggling with becoming a woman in a male dominated world, as well as choosing whether she wants to be popular or not. In the the book The House on Mango Street Esperanza is shown to become a dynamic character throughout the story. This is shown by how she is at the beginning when she changes and why. In the beginning Esperanza cares about popularity her appearance and boys. This is all shown in the chapter “Chanclas”. Her mom buys her everything for the party she is going …show more content…
Sally is someone Esperanza looks up to because she is popular and attracts boys which are attributes that Esperanza wants. “It was just a kiss. That’s all for each one. So what. She said”(97). Esperanza finds out that she needs to become promiscuous in order to be popular like Sally and she’s not comfortable with that idea. Later on Sally and Esperanza go to the carnival, Sally leaves her alone to go with a boy. Esperanza is now by herself vulnerable and ends up getting raped. She realizes that boys are not what she thought they were, so she decides to focus on herself. Esperanza changes what she thought she wanted for the future. “Not a flat, not an apartment in the back. Not a man’s house. Not daddy’s house. A house all my own”(108). Esperanza no longer strives to be popular, pretty or to be with boys. She has changed her focus onto more important things. In the book the house on mango street Esperanza's shown to be a dynamic character though how she was at the beginning when she changed and why she changed. It’s hard to transition from a girl to a woman in very male dominated society. It so shown throughout the book that it is more important to work on your future than to focus on things society makes important like looks, popularity and
She however is very reactive to this situation, she doesn’t tell anybody what happened, she steals late passes, hides in an abandoned janitor closet, and eventually ditches school. That example shows how irresponsible she is. House On Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is about a young girl who moves into a new house with her family in Chicago Illinois in the early 1980’s. Esperanza is not a very happy person, especially after the year she had at the house on Mango Street.
Esperanza is a young girl who lives on mango street and
Esperanza throughout the story tries to figure out how she stands as a women. In cisneros chapter”Boy and girl” cisneros writes”The boys and girls inseperate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours”(8).I can infer that Esperanza knows they’re seprate for a reason .The boys are to impress girls and girls are ment to impress boys. IN, the chapter “Marin” cisneros writes”since you always get to look beautiful and get to wear nice clothes and get to meet someone in the subway who might marry you and take you to live in a big house far away”
Mitchell Curtis English 9 / Period 6 Mr.Boyat 17 October 2016 Three Influential Characters in The House on Mango Street In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the story is developed through the eyes of a young girl Esperanza. She learns about the realities of life in a house that she recently moved into. There are many characters that are written as she learns about her new neighborhood. The three most influential characters in the novel are Sally, her Mother ,and Marin.
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.
Esperanza says that she will come back, she will come back for “the ones I left behind... the ones who cannot out”. (Cisneros 110). Esperanza is able to go through a change and accept who she is through her community and her family. She is able to use her situation to empower herself, and to be hopeful in her own
As a child, Esperanza wants only escape from mango Street. Her dream of independents and "self-definition" also means leaving her family behind without any responsibilities to her family. Throughout the book, her has also faced some situation where is feels ashamed to be part of the Mango Street community and in some instances refuses to admit she has anything to do with mango street. At the beginning of the book near the earlier chapters, Esperanza feels very insecure about herself in general along with the house that she lives in. As mentioned before, she doesn’t want to discuss her name nor where she lives.
Many people are undermined by the drawbacks of belonging to a low socioeconomic status. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is raised in a poor, Latino community, causing her to be introduced to poverty at an early age. This introduction of poverty affects Esperanza in many ways, one including that she is unable to find success. Esperanza struggles to achieve success in life because the cycle of poverty restricts her in a position in which she cannot break free from her socioeconomic status.
English First Semester Final Essay To many readers, the most enjoyable stories are the ones that take place without sorrow, and betrayal. While these are both tragic topics, some pieces of literature are fantastic, while still broaching topics that may be harmful to the characters themselves. In the novel Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare, and the novella The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, all contain examples of the these specific topics. These pieces of literature all share common themes of family, magic, and betrayal.
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.
(54). Esperanza chooses to be alone over having to be around adults. Esperanza finally finds the courage to talk to a colleague at work when she meets a seemly friendly older man, and she is pleased to have an older friend to sit
Just by having a positive attitude and trying so hard, already makes Esperanza overcome the obstacle of being out of place in her
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.
Esperanza’s interest is writing poem, appears in many of the chapters where it explains a way of bonding with her community by sharing poems with one another. Because Esperanza has become a writer her observations strengthen throughout the novel. One example of how she matures through writing is in the beginning of the book she told stories that were obviously meant for a younger audiences but through the middle of the book she started to use more observation based upon what she saw which helped develop the story more for the reader. This change shows that she is becoming an artist, and also that she is starting to distance herself from her community, since she focuses more on capturing experiences than living through them, she starts to further her self from interaction and focuses more on observation of the people around her. By the end of The House on Mango Street, she knows that she underwent a huge transformation and her relationship with mango st is starting to weaken.
It can also be inferred that she is physically weak and malnourished. Finally, Esperanza will do anything to get what she wants. This means that she is extremely determined. Esperanza is a very timid little girl. After pestering her mother to give her a note to eat in the canteen, she is seemingly unable to answer the nun who asks what she is doing there, instead meekly holding up the note and scurrying upstairs to Sister Superior.