Esperanza Cordero is a twelve year old girl living in poverty. Her family moves to a run-down home on Mango Street in Chicago due to her parents wanting to independently own a house. The story begins when Esperanza is twelve, and continues for a year. Throughout the year, Esperanza and her friends Lucy and Rachel experience physical as well as mental changes. For the first half of the story, the girls are living as “children.” They are vulnerable to the harmful influences of society. Some times when they are susceptible to these influences is when they strut around town in high heels and when Esperanza does not notice the issue when a man kisses her at her job. During the summer time, the girls begin puberty and to become sexually mature. In…
The chapter 5 and chapter 6 and throughout chapter 8 of the book called, The House On Mango Street; represent an ethnic picture from both the past and the present of Mango Street and the surrounding neighborhood. Cathy, Esperanza’s friend indicated what the neighborhood may have been like in the past, while the two families that moved into her house once Cathy’s left were more representative of the whole neighborhood as Esperanza came to experience it. Along the Mango Street lived the black man who was unwelcome from the rest of the neighborhood, different from the people Esperanza sees from day to day. This guy race makes him so unfamiliar that Esperanza is afraid to talk to him. Cathy has shown Esperanza the neighborhood’s two cultures, Latin American and American, and two languages, Spanish and English, which revealing the new cultural makeup of Mango Street. Cathy also provided a window into how outsiders view Esperanza’s neighborhood, even though Cathy is blind to her own family’s similarities to the families around them. Cathy’s family was moving because the neighborhood is “getting bad,” a racist reason that Esperanza immediately understands. Esperanza’s immigrant family, as well as other families like hers, was, in Cathy’s family’s view, causing the neighborhood to deteriorate, and the only thing to do was to move. However, Cathy’s family did not seem to be struggling any less than the other families in Esperanza’s neighborhood. Their house, which Cathy’s father…
Esperanza is the main character in the book “The House on Mango Street”. She started off as a naive girl that doesn’t know anything about the real world she lives in. As time passes she learns more about herself and the world around her. Another major character in this book is Sally. Sally was born into a harsh family where her father will beats her. Sally was always trapped by her father until one day she marries a man that treats her just like her father but, she doesn’t notices.…
The characterization, in The House on Mango Street, of Esperanza’s great-grandmother and Rafaela is used to convey how women were inferior to men in Esperanza’s society. According to Esperanza, her great-grandmother was a very wild woman. That is why she refused to marry until a man “threw a sack over her head and carried her off” (Cisneros, 11). This shows how unimportant women are, of that time, that a man could kidnap a woman and she could do nothing, no matter how wild she was. Also, despite her wild personality, Esperanza’s great-grandmother shows how women could be forced into marriage without a say in who they marry. Like Esperanza’s great-grandmother, Rafaela has many hopes such as dancing at the dance hall or bar. However, she never…
In "The House on Mango Street" the author tells us how she found her dream. Her large family had to move all the time in search of a decent place to live. Experiencing what not having her own place is like, moving all the time and being ashamed of her shelters, Sandra Cisneros defines the features of the house of her dream. It has to be not just her own place to live, but also a place that she could be proud of. She describes her dream house: "inside it would have real stairs, not a hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on TV"; it "would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence"(501). Moreover, she says it has to be the house "...one I could point to" (Cisneros 502). Even though these features are not necessities for living, the author 's own dream becomes her necessity to be fulfilled.…
"Esperanza. I have inherited [my great grandmother's] name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." Young Esperanza's opening thoughts in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street begins with the introduction of a surprisingly insightful disadvantaged Hispanic girl named Esperanza, who has just moved into a poor Latino neighborhood. Esperanza's opening remarks foreshadow a theme that continues to develop throughout the entire novel, cumulating piece by piece until a complete puzzle is produced. As Cisneros' Mango Street chronicles an emotionally pivotal year in the life of a young girl, the author herself presumably draws on personal experiences of being raised in an environment in which she struggles and feels like she does not belong. It is evident that Cisneros creatively expresses her own experiences in her writing, and goes so far as to dedicate the book "a las Mujeres," or to the Women. Though not purely biographical, striking similarities of race and background exist between the author and narrator such that Cisneros…
Sandra Cisneros conveys the grim daily struggles for Esperanza in her book, The House On Mango Street. Throughout the novel, Esperanza searches for her identity and longs for freedom, while experiencing gender bias and objectification in her neighborhood. She rejects a life of poverty, submission to men, and stereotypes. During her year on Mango Street, she grows, dreams, and learns how to overcome these struggles.…
In The House On Mango Street, the main character, Esperanza, describes the hairs of her family members. The way she describes her family member's hairs symbolizes their personality.…
The House on Mango Street is the “coming of age” story of a Mexican-American girl named Esperanza Cordero. The story covers a year in Esperanza's life starting with when she moved to the house on mango street. As the year progresses Esperanza grows emotionally and artistically, as the novel roams through her experience of life. Esperanza, her friends (Rachel, Lucy), and her sister Nenny have many adventures throughout the book. Esperanza has many life experiences including the art of poetry and music also the downsides of poverty and shame. Although the novel includes unforgettable men it also includes women who a trapped in many ways. For Example, Mamacita does not leave the apartment b/c she is afraid of the English language. Rafaela who…
In the first vignette “The House on Mango Street,” Esperanza's is not able to accept that her house will always be part of her. When she is confronted by a nun outside of her house, the nun said “‘You live there?’ The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there.” (Cisneros 5). The way Esperanza feels embarrassed about looking at her house shows her not accepting the house as part of her. She is ashamed of how the house looks from the outside and disregards how this is the house she is growing up in. On the contrary, In a last vignette “Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes”, Esperanza is able to accept that the house on Mango Street will always be a part of her background. While dreaming about leaving Mango Street, Esperanza's notes that her old neighbors “will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out”(Cisneros 79). Esperanza showing how she would return to Mango Street after leaving to help people she left behind shows her growth into adulthood. This idea displays that Esperanza is accepting her…
The House on Mango street is a feminist piece of literature because it brings attentions to the sexist way the men in Esperanza’s society regard women. Esperanza tells her story by focusing on the women around her who are owned by the dominant men in their lives due to restricting gender roles that encompasses not only women but men. “My great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off...She (Esperanza’s grandmother) looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” (11) Cisneros brings attention to the cruel way that men in Esperanza’s society treat women. The normality of these discriminatory actions describes a gender role that society has set for men, to be the dominant figure in…
On the book The House on Mango Street Esperanza is a little girl that is affected by different situations. There are things that happened to her that shaped her as an individual and change her perspective of life. Female sexuality is a really strong topic where we can see how young females are affected with it and how they see it. Esperanza is a young virgin girl at the beginning of the book and she longs to have a sexual encounter for it is something new for her. She is just a child and things started to happen in her life and mind that prepared her for that special situation. Esperanza and her friends think that by having sex they will become women, real women. Through out the book we see different situations with sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is a big issue that has been taking over little girls’ minds…
“The boys and the girls live in separate worlds.” In my opinion, I think what she was trying to say is that the boys and the girls are different. Boys and girls have different perspectives on things and enjoy different things. Most boys like to play games and sports while most girls like to go shopping and gossip. In “The House on Mango Street,” Esperanza explains that her brothers are an example. Her brothers talk to her and Nenny when they are inside the house, but they can’t be seen talking to girls in public. In this book, the narrator addresses problems that occur in Esperanza’s neighborhood. Esperanza’s friend, who is in eighth grade, got married in another state. Most of the female characters in this book deal with discrimination based…
What is the american dream? Many people will answer that question by saying being successful in america. Others would say that having a nice house in a good neighboorhood, a good marriage, two kids and a golden retreiver is the american dream. Unlike these beliefs of what the american dream is for many latinos that come to this country the american dream is simply one word, survival. For esperanza her american dream is to get out of mango street. Something that she wishes for and is certain that when the time comes she will do. The house on mango street by sandra cisneros manifest all the stuggles and hardships latinos go through when they come to this country to try and achieve the american dream. Imagine going outside and not being able to read what the signs in the street say, or going to eat somewhere and not being able to get what you want because no one understands the language you speak. This is a huge struggle that all latinos face when they come here, the language barrier. Home is something that is far far away for latino immigrants. Home is family, friends, smells, food, familiar faces, the place you love. Something that most latinos don't have when they come to america. Esperansa knows that mango street isn't the home she wants. Longing for home is sometimes the biggest stuggle of being an immigrant. Something that esperanza has dealt with her entire life. In the story esperanza learns that achieving your dreams are very difficult speacially if you are a latino women.…
The tree is described as an amazing figure visible to everyone all over the village and its’ presence is felt by all who inhabit it. The old man stresses continually the importance of the tree by recounting the many strangers’ visits in which the tree had been endangered of being cut down and the villagers had battled against the foreign influences.…