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The House On Mango Street Essay

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Life and House Love Most kids growing up live carefree, have sleepovers, and mainly care about what they are going to play at recess. Esperanza is different, she cares about how her life is seen and worries how it is being seen by others. In the book “The House on Mango Street” written by Sandra Cisneros, there is a 12 year old girl named Esperanza who lives in a red house with her siblings and parents. Throughout the book we learn about different situations she goes through with different people in her life. 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 …show more content…

Cisneros writes, “That one? she said pointing to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into.”(p.45). This quote shows how even the Nuns at her school viewed her house in a poor manner as well. This shamed Esperanza in a deeper way than from what the nun probably expected. The nun stating this proved in a way to Esperanza that her house isn’t the nicest and everyone around her seems to agree. Growing up in a home in which she didn’t love really affected Esperanza especially when others pointed it out to …show more content…

Although she was already ashamed of her house before she felt that the way people around her spoke of her house justified the way she thought of it. She couldn’t find the good or beauty in her home since no one else did. In the beginning of the chapter she mentioned how her parents described to her, “Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence.”(4). The quote shows how Esperanza was given hope that she was able to live in a home that was as beautiful as she can imagine it to be. She was dreaming of her perfect home and once she felt that ounce of hope she was going to get it, her hope went away. From that moment on Esperanza had hatred for her home and couldn’t find the good in her home. Esperanza was given hope that she was going to have a home she loved and it was the home of her dreams. Once she saw the house they were actually moving to set the mood for however much longer Esperanza lived in that home. In the book it states,“But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't

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In the novel The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros utilizes vignettes, which typically captures a single moment by using imagery, and explains a lot with not as many words to explain Esperanza’s life that shows the complex feelings relating to her childhood. Cisneros uses imagery to capture a single moment in the book many times throughout the novel. In the vignette “Bums in the Attic” (Cisneros 86), Esperanza dreams about having a house on the hill like the ones her family visits. She feels ashamed but imagines that people living on the hill have forgotten about poor people like her family. She figures out by the end that she still wants to have a house like theirs but wants to invite the bums into her attic

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But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it” (Cisneros 5). From the quote alone a reader could tell that Esperanza is ashamed of her “house”

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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.

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She comes to see the house as a metaphor for her own personal growth as she gets older. Esperanza's body becomes a metaphor for the house, and its "rooms" stand in for different facets of her character and identity. In one chapter, for instance, she says that her "Sally" and

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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 neighborhood is not the richest and cleanest neighborhood around, in fact it could be counted as run down with a gloomy atmosphere. Esperanza’s house can be described as “small and red with tight steps in front.” With the description of this house we can assume that all the other houses will be similar and with that picture in mind, “those who don’t know any better comes into our neighborhood scared” because the setting is seen as a run down neighborhood. In a run down neighborhood you assume the worse because it's not like a clean

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When Esperanza talks to Cathy, she feels less than because of her comment, “Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad” (Cisneros 13). This makes Esperanza feel bad about where she lives because her

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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.

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Esperanza wants to go away from Mango Street and have her own house, but Esperanza also has to face the fact that every experience she had on Mango Street shaped her identity. In vignette 109 Esperanza describes how she feels living on Mango Street, and how she wants to move far away from Mango Street, Cisneros uses imagery as one literary device the reason behind this is that Esperanza describes her house that she’s living 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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For Esperanza, her house isn’t just a house – it’s a reflection of her identity. Deep in her heart Esperanza longs for a house. A house

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“In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in (Cisneros 13).” This quote is a significant part of the story because it shows how Esperanza truly feels about herself and her family. She thinks that because she is poor and lives and a bad neighborhood people move away from her family. Esperanza doesn’t think very much of her or her family at all. She thinks that it is because of their race that people do not want to be near them.

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The reaction to this small house affects her to dream of living in a house of her own (Cisneros 4). Esperanza isn’t all that wealthy; this is evident when they can’t afford lunch meats so she makes a rice Maggard 3 sandwich (Cisneros 44). Overall Esperanza learns to cope with her living situation just talking to people and she also works really hard in school and at home and eventually moves away. These three characters have proved to all be very unique and different.

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