What Are The Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And The House On Mango Street

Henry Carson
Ms. Henry
Set 4
1 February 2023
Carson Midterm Upgraded The American dreams seem beautiful from the outside. It includes a white picket fence, bright green grass, and a happy little family. Yet, for some reason, this dream excludes many people, because they do not fit into neat little boxes created through traditional American ideals. Many authors challenge and bring into question different flaws and mistakes within these common American ideals in their own unique ways. In both To Kill a Mockingbird, and House on Mango Street, the authors address flaws within American ideals, and what these ideals claim to be true about both gender and race. In both To Kill a Mockingbird, and House on Mango Street, the authors highlight issues

Harper Lee uses dialogue to expose racial injustice induced by traditional American views at the time when Atticus says,”Who beat you up? Tom Robinson or your father” (Lee 213)? Lee uses the events of the trial to challenge American views on race, because even though Tom was obviously innocent, he was voted guilty by the jury due to his skin color. Lee challenges American ideals of the time for a second time when the book quotes,”They’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere” (Lee 183). The mixed race children are used as an example to prove how wrong American ideals of the time were. The children were a living example of how black and white people could happily coexist, yet they were excluded from being accepted within either group. Cisneros also addresses the irony of racism within American ideals at the time when Hous on Mango Street quotes,”But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight” (Cisneros 28). Cisneros uses irony to address the fact that American ideals on race at the time were illogical, because people of other ethnicities were scared of Esparanza’s mainly Latin-American community, while she was scared of their communities. Within their books, both Lee and Cisneros address the flaws of racial generalizations and injustice generated by American