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The House On Mango Street Literary Analysis

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All people on this Earth have goals that they long for. For many people, their family or community may vastly affect if they can continue their dreams. In Sandra Cisneros’s novella, The House on Mango Street, Cisneros conveys the theme of longing by having many characters who were burdened with issues early on in their lives, especially with the women who were forced to have fewer opportunities with their lives.
Cisneros first brings up longing very early on in the novella when Esperanza talks about the origin of her name along with the story of her great grandparents. “My Name”, mentions how it is supposedly bad luck to be born in the Chinese year of the horse if you are a female, but Esperanza disagrees as she thinks, “this is a Chinese lie …show more content…

When Esperanza receives a palm reading and makes a wish by the three sisters, she is told, “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.” (Cisneros 105) This implies that Esperanza wished for something of her own gain, something similar to her leaving Mango Street and moving on from it. As much as she wants to deny it, Esperanza needs to stay true to her word and help the people who can’t leave as easily as her. Furthermore, Esperanza’s main goal in life is to have a house all to her own,“Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own.” (Cisneros 108) Cisneros conveys Esperanza’s mentality on how she wants to have her own life that isn’t guided and owned by a man. Esperanza has seen many other women on Mango Street be controlled and manipulated by a man, and she won’t let herself fall for that. This perfectly wraps up Esperanza’s character and growth throughout the vignettes, as she gains the mental strength to be different from the

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Although there are a variety of characters throughout literature that have made sacrifices that expose their values, none of them come close in comparison to the sacrifices of Esperanza in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. The consistent sacrifices displayed through Esperanza’s self-image, innocence, and cynicism express the struggles and desire for feminine individuality and respect that begin for many in childhood and dissolve into adulthood. Not only does Esperanza display these sacrifices constantly throughout the novel, the author’s use of her character as a beacon of catharsis to the reader symbolically represents the majority of women. Much like other women, Esperanza constantly tries to find herself throughout her own sacrifices,

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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

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She dreams “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever” (707). Esperanza believes that she can change the way she is living and live a better life. She is trying to get a good education to become a more improved and intelligent person so one day she does not have to be poor.

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In House On Mango Street, Esperanza is surrounded by many characters. Her family, her friends, and the other residents of Mango Street (and beyond). She learns a little bit about life from each of them and she matures quickly in this new neighborhood. The majority of lessons she learns aren’t from her mother or father, or really anybody in her family, she learns her most valuable lessons from people she meets in Mango Street.

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The experience of male oppression leads Esperanza to express herself through creative ways, like, writing. This causes her to want to leave and escape Mango Street. At the end of the book, Esperanza is still in the same house, but she has matured and is confident that she is stronger than to be trapped there forever. Her writing lets her escape Mango Street emotionally, but it will also let her escape physically through education and financial independence. When she actually does leave, Esperanza promises to come back to Mango Street for people who are not strong enough to escape due to

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Change occurs everywhere, it is the time in life where a person finds themselves in either a difficult or good situation and learns to accept themselves. “The House on Mango Street,” written by Sandra Cisneros, is a novella based on the author’s life, a memoir. It all begins with a young girl named Esperanza Cordero, the protagonist, wishing to live in a house where she can call “my house,” or “home,” because she is ashamed of the house she is currently living in. Esperanza soon goes through many obstacles such as the death of a loved one, her desires, and rape, which all leads her to finally have a better understanding of her own sexuality. As Esperanza grows older, she gradually develops into a young, mature and responsible woman in society

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Imagine sacrificing your future solely for another person's benefit. Over time, there has been a recurring pattern of women becoming a second priority. Many women are presumed to put others' aspirations before theirs because of traditional and stereotypical female roles or because of controlling male figures. This theme is shown throughout Sandra Cisernos's novel, The House on Mango Street. This book is a collection of vignettes exploring Esperanza's coming-of-age and evolving perspectives on life.

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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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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.

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Many people are undermined by the drawbacks of belonging to a low socioeconomic status. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is raised in a poor, Latino community, causing her to be introduced to poverty at an early age. This introduction of poverty affects Esperanza in many ways, one including that she is unable to find success. Esperanza struggles to achieve success in life because the cycle of poverty restricts her in a position in which she cannot break free from her socioeconomic status.

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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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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)

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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 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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In the series of vignettes The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros details the life of main character Esperanza, a young girl living in a barrio of Chicago. As Esperanza tells the reader about her experiences in her day to day life, the reader hears about her struggles and dreams, her hopes and expectations in life and how these affect her. Being a young girl, Esperanza holds naivety and hope for the world, not having experienced many mature situations or society yet, and since she is going through the time in her life when she begins experiencing these issues, we see her heartbreak and the world she knew shatter. For example, when Esperanza and her family move to Mango Street, as our story kicks off, her parents would often talk about the life that they would get when they win the lottery, like having “A real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked.

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