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The House On Mango Street Context Essay

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Isabelle Muldowney Mrs. Itzen English III, Honors 12 April 2023 Cultural Context of the Novel The House on Mango Street The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros takes place in a low-class neighborhood of Chicago around the 1960's. The story narrated by a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, as it follows her growing up and coming to grips with her surroundings. The house is essential to the story as it is a symbol of pride and stability as it is the first house owned by the Cordero family. This setting creates conflict as they all try finding their identity and a place in the world through their new home and new life. During this time, men see women below them and they are often beat in the environment Esperanza grows up in. This also affects the character development as she watches so many …show more content…

In the book, Esperanza refuses to be reformed by men and refuses to ever get married or act dictated feminine ways. The economic status of the Cordero family is not told outright, however, based on context clues is it evident they are plebeians. Even though Esperanza never mentions they are poor, she struggles to make a life for herself when the cycle of poverty is constant in her life. Being raised poor also forced her to be more aware of the different social classes within her community. She becomes insecure and embarrassed because of her family's lack of wealth. She attempts to hide her poverty as she hides her unappealing shoes at a party and lies about what house she lives in. This creates a sense of isolation and worthlessness as Esperanza thinks herself unwanted because of the way she grew up. This is not

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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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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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How would you feel when you grew to realize the street you were raised on wasn’t good for your wellbeing and that you needed to get away? Well, ‘The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros is a story about Esperanza’s childhood growing up in Chicago and how she develops as she gets older throughout the book. She realizes throughout the book that she didn’t belong on Mango Street. It takes whomever is reading it on an adventure through Esperanza’s point of view on her life. The book shows an overview of her childhood through several small short stories put together.

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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.

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Esperanza’s Poverty Throughout the story “The House on Mango Street” there are many circumstances where poverty affected Esperanza and her story. As most people know, wealth plays quite a large role in every person's everyday life. In “The House on Mango Street” wealth is a big part of the book because it affects the way she lives, her schooling, and her family circumstances. The way Esperanza lives also has to do with poverty.

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I lived there. I nodded” - pg.5. Esperanza has a low social status because she is poor and struggles to stand up for herself in her community. It was harder for Esperanza to strive for the independence and a higher ranking that she has wanted. She was looked down at by people even more because of her family background.

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Most of Esperanza’s female neighbors are abused or oppressed by their fathers and husbands, so Esperanza knows that she wants to escape the male dominated society, but at the same time she has to deal with her own sexuality and her desire to be loved by men. She meets Sally who is around the same age as her but is more sexually mature than other girls and she also has an abusive father. Being a Sally’s friend, Esperanza experiences “the loss of innocence” as she describes it in the book. Esperanza’s friendship with Sally also leads her to the most traumatic experience in the book, for example, as Sally leaves her alone at a carnival Esperanza is raped. This is the moment that Esperanza’s experiences a massive impact in her life.

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But still feels lonely. Also, throughout the story Esperanza gets negative attention from boys because of her culture. For some men she comes across in the story they see her as a toy for her ethnicity and not being from America. This also embarrasses her as she is still trying to find out what love is but can’t because if the negative attention. Therefore, even though she struggles pushing through with her ethnicity, others have it just as hard as well, showing how different ethnicities can clash.

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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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We see Esperanza’s emotions change through each chapter towards her house and her life. Esperanza struggles to enjoy her life without comparison to those around her. Growing up in a poor household had Esperanza feeling all sorts of emotions

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However, by the end of the story she ends up finding herself and her goals. Self-Respect is an important value that Cisneros is tries to impart to her readers because Esperanza always feels like she does not fit in, and she does not want to end up like the rest of her neighborhood. Esperanza learns that it is hard to fit in

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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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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

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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.

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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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