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The House On Mango Street Analysis Essay

2452 Words10 Pages

Kelbey Deck
Mr. Hayworth
Honors English IV
05/17/16
The House on Mango Street

Girls experience different challenges than boys while going through the adolescent stages while maturing, varying in their emotional, physical and sexual development. Esperanza, the protagonist, does not feel fully connected with her home on Mango Street, owing to her struggles to defy stereotypes that society has set for girls of her age and race. Once Esperanza has conquered puberty and has developed some sort of identity, she finds herself emotionally ready to leave Mango Street, but realizes that in the end, she must come back to rescue all the women she left behind. The novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, is about a Chicana’s coming of age story …show more content…

“Knowing that she cannot improve herself well by following her family and society imprudently, Esperanza is well aware that she will be unable to manage to have her own home or freedom if she does exactly what others do” (Kalay). Having friends while going through puberty seems essential in a young girl’s life, but Esperanza does not feel affixed to the girls who she spends time with, intensifying her loneliness, which makes finding her own identity even harder. Just like Esperanza wants a “real” house of her own and a true identity, she also wishes for friends that she feels connected with. “Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 9). The “balloon tied to an anchor” metaphor symbolizes her loneliness, and then, later on in the novel, Esperanza compares herself to trees that are unappreciated and cannot leave where they are

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The House on Mango Street Analysis Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, is a book of poetry, about the coming of age of a young Latina girl named Esperanza told from Esperanza’s point of view. Esperanza is an observant and descriptive. These traits make her an excellent narrator because of her ability to breathe life into the story. Throughout the book, Esperanza deals with her Latin heritage, her family, growing up and other teenage topics. But what makes The House on Mango Street stand out from other books is its intimate details.

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Although there are a variety of characters throughout literature that have made sacrifices that expose their values, none of them come close in comparison to the sacrifices of Esperanza in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. The consistent sacrifices displayed through Esperanza’s self-image, innocence, and cynicism express the struggles and desire for feminine individuality and respect that begin for many in childhood and dissolve into adulthood. Not only does Esperanza display these sacrifices constantly throughout the novel, the author’s use of her character as a beacon of catharsis to the reader symbolically represents the majority of women. Much like other women, Esperanza constantly tries to find herself throughout her own sacrifices,

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She is a Puerto Rican girl that wants “someone to change her life” and spends her days babysitting at her house (27). Esperanza gets the idea of marrying a rich man to get out of Mango Street. Marin also tells her about boys “is for the boys to see us and for us to see them” (27). These two ideas Marin shared with Esperanza shows how she can leave Mango Street and live a better life. To conclude, Sally, Mom, and Marin are the three most influential characters in the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros for opening abusive relationships, staying in school for the better, and leaving poverty by marrying a rich man to the main character

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Overall, Esperanza's biggest challenges are found in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. At the beginning of the story, Esperanza struggles with her feelings about where she lives. She is embarrassed by the appearance and stifling atmosphere of the apartment. Figurative language is used when it says, "Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off." In the middle of the story, Esperanza struggles with the feelings of her name.

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The House on Mango Street: Facing Realities In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, many characters struggle with facing the realities of their lives and economical situations. Two prominent examples of this struggle are houses and trapped women. One girl, named Esperanza, is raped while she is visiting the carnival with her friend Sally. Esperanza said, "Sally, you lied.

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She dreams “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever” (707). Esperanza believes that she can change the way she is living and live a better life. She is trying to get a good education to become a more improved and intelligent person so one day she does not have to be poor.

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Although it is not always clear, women are constantly being treated as lesser than men. Women and men are approaching equality, but many women are still being treated unfairly. White communities usually pretend that everything is perfect and cover up this problem. Hispanics, on the other hand, often make the mistreatment of women perspicuous. This is portrayed in the novella The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros.

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Those Who Don’t “Those Who Don’t” is a short vignette in Sandra Cisneros's novella, The House on Mango Street, although short, it carries an important theme that allows a more thorough understanding of others - Don’t judge something or someone based on the current info, things can be surprisingly different than you imagined. Esperanza lives in a neighborhood where people see them as dangerous people because of the area. Cisnero develops this theme by using a family who, accidentally, stumbles into Esperanza’s neighborhood. She reinforces the theme by using descriptive words and Esperanza’s own perspective.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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