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What Is Esperanza's Dream In The House On Mango Street

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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. …show more content…

This ideal heaven that Esperanza's family dream about is what gives them hope to keep going everyday, although it may not be attainable. Since Esperanza does not know this, though, when they get to their new house on Mango Street, she sees it is nothing like that despite the depictions of a house she was told. This contributes to a cynical, jaded attitude that is sad to see someone so young have, as we see when she her parents tell her that this new house is temporary, and she tells the reader: “But I know how those things go” (Cisneros, 5). Here, although the house of dreams help her parents keep surviving, it gives haunts Esperanza as an unobtainable myth. Later in the book, Esperanza becomes so fed up with the talk of the lottery, “I am tired of looking at things we can't

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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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Esperanza’s house on Mango Street is not the house she dreamed on when she lived on Loomis Street, not the kind of house her parent’s talked about, not the house she wanted. Her house on Mango Street is a small, red house with even smaller stairs leading to the door. The brick are falling out of place and to get inside, one must shove the door, swollen like Esperanza’s feet in later vignettes, open. Once inside, where you are never very far from someone else, there are small hallway stairs that lead to the only one shared bedroom and bathroom. This house is just, “For the time being,”[5] Esperanza claims, for this is nothing like the house she longs for.

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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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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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Not once, or twice, or ever again.” (Cisneros 105). One of the reasons for this is her meeting the three old ladies who came for Rachel’s sister’s funeral. There prophesy that Esperanza will leave Mango Street boosts her self-confidence. The narrator also says, “Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to.”

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