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The House On Mango Street Coming Of Age Analysis

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pDevin Glover Mrs. Tzarri English II 9 January 2016 The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel that Presents the life and struggles of a adolescent girl named Esperanza Cordero in Chicago during the 1970’s. Esperanza Cordero,is a young latina girl growing up on Mango Street in Chicago in the 1970’s. And she goes through a great ordeal of hardships from youth to even when she is a young adult.And Despite the fact that Esperanza wants to keep her innocence/childhood she has a coming of age experience full of letdowns and scarring moments. Childhood is a valuable but mostly overlooked part of life, consisting of learning( ABC’s,Math, Life Lessons) and irreproachability(innocence). Esperanza wants to keep her innocence/ …show more content…

But since she is getting older, she has started coming of age. And Coming of age is not something that happens quickly it is a gradual experience that happens overtime.Esperanza’s coming of age experience is full of misunderstandings, letdowns, and scaring moments, Thus making it the worst and most confusing part of her life. For instance when she and a group of girls were talking about their hips and about how they are going to be coming in soon.The hips are a symbol of them becoming women. But Nenny does not seem to care as much as esperanza and all the other girls do. “Nenny, I say, but she doesn’t hear me….”[Cisneros 52]. The girls are talking about their hips and Nenny lack of interest shows how much younger/ less mature she is than everybody else.So when Esperanza says “ she doesn’t hear me….” it is not because she physically can not hear them it because she does not know what is going on and because of that she does not care. And Esperanza and the girls are so much more older than nenny and there maturing. And all they care about is their bodies and Nenny is focused on being a kid still. Also, since Esperanza feel as though she is grown up, she starts making decision on her own, and she starts having these urges/feelings. Like what it would be like to have a boyfriend and etc. So one day Esperanza goes to a carnival with Sally and while there they run into some boys.Sally left with one boy and left esperanza with the rest. And while sally was gone. The rest of the boys forcefully kissed and raped esperanza.And when she saw sally again she broke down and said “ Sally, you lied, it wasn’t what you said at all….”[Cisneros 99].Esperanza was forced into having sex and when she finds sally she loses composure and let’s all her feelings out. This quote shows that even though Esperanza is maturing she is still a kid inside because she says “The way they said it, the way it's supposed to be,

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It is undoubtedly due to the ultimate sacrifice of cynicism she forfeited in exchange for a chance at companionship and contentedness, which she failed at in almost every social circumstance. This is not because of her animosity or lack of enough wits to always entertain her friends, but simply her naivety and gullibility. It is important to note that this expression of total trust in her friends is a conscious action of Esperanza. Over and over again, she is faced with circumstances that cause her to lose trust in the friends she made throughout the novel. This sacrifice of cynicism shows that Esperanza values believing in an artificial or “fake” friend more so than she wants to be alone, even if she knows she will eventually get hurt just like the last

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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.

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“Don’t worry, I will take care of everything. I am working and I can pay the bills” (Munoz Ryan, 184). Esperanza still helped her mother even though Esperanza was going through a lot and also trying to care for the home. For this reason, there is a point in the story where Miguel's job was taken by the people in Oklahoma and Esperanza was not keen about how Migel’s job was

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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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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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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.

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Esperanza is a very strongly written character and plays a very good protagonist experiencing life and dealing the harshness of

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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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Esperanza experiences a sense of beauty and attention when she is strolling through the streets in high heels with Lucy and Rachel receiving comments such as “ ladies, lead me to heaven” (Cisneros 41) from a boy and jealousy from six girls who watch as they walk by. Later, Esperanza meets Rafaela who happened to be trapped in her house because of her husband and this probably has Esperanza thinking of what her future could be like with a husband. A short while after Esperanza befriends a girl named Sally who happens to be the prettiest girl her age at school. Sally receives all the attention from the boys but is beaten by her father at home because of her beauty. All of these experiences beginning with Esperanza not worried about boys to getting attention from boys is a key and then learning that your beauty can get you in trouble ultimately confuses Esperanza’s views on what to believe about

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In the vignette My Name, Esperanza is at the beginning of this development. She describes her name, which symbolizes the person that she has to be for her family, or the role that her family has put her in. She explains that she was named after her great grandmother, a woman whose freedom was taken away from her. Therefore, this name is also associated with her and her situation. At one point, when talking about her great grandmother, Esperanza says “She looked out her window her whole life, the way so many women sit with their sadness on an elbow….I

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Believe it or not, people are not entirely unique. It is certain that no one is truly the same as another person, but it would not be ridiculous to think that everyone does in fact share many similarities. After all, the majority of the population grows and develops opinions or values based on what they see or hear. For Esperanza, the protagonist of Sandra Cisneros’s, The House on Mango Street, the perspective she has is built upon her childhood on Mango Street. This coming-of-age novel illustrates how Esperanza’s experiences on Mango Street play an important role during her period of growth.

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Because Esperanza’s achievements aren’t at top of the priority list for her family, Esperanza does not have to do much which reflects her life in the future. Not only are low expectations about achieving great things, but are also about the way people dress. Esperanza’s neighborhood consists of kids whose “clothes are crooked and old” (Cisneros 14). Notably, Esperanza is not expected to dress up fancy whereas if she goes to another neighborhood, their clothing and physical appearance are given a lot of attention. From these examples, one can see that when Esperanza goes into other neighborhoods or grows older and

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When upstairs, she starts crying while having a conversation with the nun, saying “I always cry when the nuns yell at me, even if they’re not yelling.” This is yet another example of Esperanza’s shyness and social awkwardness. Lastly, after being told that she can eat at canteen for the day, she cries and eats her rice sandwich alone. Esperanza is also physically weak and malnourished.

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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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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.

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