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House on mango street summer reading essay
House on mango street summer reading essay
Analyze of ‘The House on Mango Street’ by Sandra Cisneros
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In The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, the dominant theme for these collection of vignettes is the dreams and beauty expressed throughout the book using poetic devices. For instance, Esperanza grasps onto the dream of having her own house as she remains discontented with the house on Mango Street. On page 5, she stated, “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house.”
Yet her refusal to do so prevents her growth. She instead chooses to sit by her window and miss something that she can no longer have. Esperanza throughout the novel does the same. She misses a home, even though at that moment her home is Mango Street. She is constantly repeating throughout the novel that Mango Street is temporary and not her home.
Esperanza comprehends the potential she wields within her, however, believes Mango Street is that anchor holding her down because with so much negativity and harm will never truly allow her to leave. Therefore, she searches for her identity all her life on Mango Street because she has potential and the ability to leave while nobody truly else has the chance, causing her to never fit in. It is not until the end where even though she never belonged, she did because the house on Mango Street is her home
Esperanza and her family live in the house on Mango Street. Esperanza said, "The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody." (3) This quote shows that Esperanza and her family are proud to own a house of their own, but the reality of her situation is that she is still very poor and the house is not expensive to own. Towards the end of the book, Esperanza says, "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back.
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.
Much like a bad dream where one cannot move, Esperanza has no power or voice; her entire life resembles this nightmare. She is discriminated against, not only for her race, but for her gender and social status as well. Dealing with all this unfair treatment, she is easily taken advantage of, leading to a desperation for a better life. She craves for a “real house” but, due to her family’s poverty, they are forced to move frequently into dingy apartments. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’s use of rhetorical devices like imagery, analogies, and motifs, helps to create the text’s longing tone.
Living on Mango Street allows Esperanza to forge her own path
The debilitating impacts of her poverty prompt her to become like a tree “who grew despite concrete.” (75) She realizes then that despite the constant adversity she faces and her home that “even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into” (45), she learns vicariously through the women in her life that she doesn’t want to “inherit her (grandmother’s) place by the window.” (11) At this point Esperanza has realized that she must pave her own way out of Mango Street and has finally come to terms with her place in society.
Esperanza shifts from a follower into a confused individual, allowing her to begin her life as a woman outside of the oppressive nature of Mango Street. The suffocating stereotypes and sad, gloomy traits of the culture surrounding Esperanza contribute to the cultivation of her strong will and ardor. Mango Street opens her eyes to the abusive nature of her environment, and aids her in breaking the chain of corruption by defining and terminating the situation for herself. The neighborhood itself allows Esperanza to
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 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
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.
Although there is much debate on whether or not William Shakespeare is the true author of his plays, the fact remains that he is the true author. Even if he weren't, it wouldn't change the fact that the plays are still meaningful and should be studied. For this reason, this debate isn’t incredibly important, but it should still be considered in order to reveal truth. A common theory is that the true author of the stories of Shakespeare is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. De Vere, however, died in 1604.1 The Tempest, however, is estimated by multiple educational sources including Sparknotes, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Shmoop to have been written between 1610 and 1611.2, 3, 4 If this estimation is correct, there is no way de Vere could have written The Tempest.
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)
This ideal heaven that Esperanza's family dream about is what gives them hope to keep going everyday, although it may not be attainable. Since Esperanza does not know this, though, when they get to their new house on Mango Street, she sees it is nothing like that despite the depictions of a house she was told. This contributes to a cynical, jaded attitude that is sad to see someone so young have, as we see when she her parents tell her that this new house is temporary, and she tells the reader: “But I know how those things go” (Cisneros, 5). Here, although the house of dreams help her parents keep surviving, it gives haunts Esperanza as an unobtainable myth.
