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What Is The Role Of The Cultural Lens In The House On Mango Street

467 Words2 Pages

In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Esperanza, a young girl from Mexico, describes the unfortunate fact of her and her family –consisting of Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki and Nenny, as well as Esperanza herself- moving to another neighborhood far away from where they lived in the past. The story tells what happens after the family moves to Mango Street as well as some information about each character that Esperanza meets during her journey including descriptions about herself and her family, stating that Esperanza is the narrator in the novel. The novel is viewed through Esperanza’s eyes, as she shows everything around her illiberally, from her culture to the people and events she faces. The method of narrating the story language wise …show more content…

All these things affected the narration of the novel. A number of lenses also had a role in affecting the narration, such as the childish lens, cultural lens, and insecurity lens. As mentioned before, the cultural lens shows the negative language of Esperanza towards her cultural inheritance. The childish lens shows that Esperanza is a child since she uses an informal and childlike language. In some places, the narration was incomprehensible because there weren’t always quotations to show that someone specific said something. For example “She says, I am the great great grand cousin of the queen of France”, which might be either that Cathy said that about herself or as a compliment to Esperanza. The House on Mango Street shows different events from the eyes of a child, Esperanza. A child who shows how she feels and her opinion about everything and everyone she meets in her life, and not what is exactly in front of her. Therefore, we can understand that the novel is somehow biased showing the one-dimensional vision of the

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