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Themes In The House On Mango Street

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Recommended: The house on mango street literary elements

The story of young Esperanza Cordero told throughout the pages of The House on Mango Street shows the evolution of her identity and how it is swayed by personal desire and conflict within her everyday life. This narrative begins with the lonely girl who shares her embarrassment about her red house on Mango Street, that soon develops into a self-loathing adolescent who is done having to face all the problems of her world. Her words and thoughts help develop many of the overlying themes present overtime and the changes in the plot throughout the book. Starting at the beginning of Esperanza’s adventure it is easily seen how much she despises her family’s new house on Mango Street. Her view of the house soon progresses into her demand to find a house that is solely her own. On page 5 she wrote, “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it.”(Cisneros, 5). This desire of hers shows an underlying theme of the book, the American Dream. She craves to independently rise above her social class and reach a point where she can be proud of where she came from and the journey she took to reach it. Although this theme is present throughout the entirety of the book her view of …show more content…

This can range from despising her name to finally eating in the Canteen and discovering it’s not what she expected (10, 43). However, there are larger conflicts within the book that challenges the reader to reflect on the purity of Esperanza’s identity. One that comes to mind is the many cases of sexual assault and violence shown towards supporting characters. For instance on page 100, “Sally Sally a hundred times. Why didn’t you hear me when I called? Why didn’t you tell them to leave me alone? The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine.”

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Loss of Innocence In the book The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros demonstrates in her writing how a child can be forced to mature too rapidly. Esperanza encounters sexism, racism, and discrimination towards the poor that impacted her paradigm of the world around her. The motif occurring throughout the novel is how a young girl must become a woman before they are ready. In the chapter “The Monkey Garden”, Esperanza makes one of her final transitions into the woman, her environment forces her to be, this is shown by the change of her opinion of her shoes, the realization of woman accepting manipulation by men, and her loss of childlike interest in the Monkey Garden.

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In The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, the main character, Esperanza, begins a silent fight against gender roles. As a woman, she is expected to be quiet and polite. Esperanza, a passionate young girl, desires to be stronger than that. Esperanza is young, but she already sees what she is meant to be in life.

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Esperanza and her family live in the house on Mango Street. Esperanza said, "The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody." (3) This quote shows that Esperanza and her family are proud to own a house of their own, but the reality of her situation is that she is still very poor and the house is not expensive to own. Towards the end of the book, Esperanza says, "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back.

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In Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street," the concept that all kids have to grow up and lose their childhood innocence is conveyed through symbolic language. Cisneros provides an evocative and fascinating portrait of adolescence by employing figurative language such as metaphor, simile, and personification. The house on Mango Street is used as a metaphor numerous times throughout the novel, and it is one of the most powerful literary devices. The heroine, Esperanza, associates the house with her family's poverty and the restrictions this places on her.

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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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In the the book The House on Mango Street Esperanza is shown to become a dynamic character throughout the story. This is shown by how she is at the beginning when she changes and why. In the beginning Esperanza cares about popularity her appearance and boys. This is all shown in the chapter “Chanclas”. Her mom buys her everything for the party she is going

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House on Mango Street analysis essay: Hopes and Dreams In the House on Mango Street, a novel by Sandra Cisneros, she suggests the notion that hopes and dreams can be obtained even when people are at the bottom of the totem pole as seen in Esperanza’s desire to live in a better place and find friends. One way that Sandra Cisneros suggests this theme is when Esperanza feels ashamed of her current house and knows “she has to have a real house. One she can point to and feel proud of (Cisneros 5) Another example is when Esperanza and the nun are talking and the nun asks where Esperanza lives and she is forced to “point to the the third floor, with the paint peeling”

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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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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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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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The main protagonist Esperanza, matures from a childish girl to a young confident woman through many critical and life changing events in the story. Ultimately, the author, Sandra Cisneros implements the symbols of confidence, the house on mango street and the metaphor of shoes to show how Esperanza develops into a more mature state. Sandra Cisneros

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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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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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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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