Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street tells the story of a young, teenage, Latina girl named Esperanza, living in the late twentieth century. Esperanza takes her readers through her life and adventures through each chapter of the novella where each time she learns something. She faces the troubles of racism, friendship, and strange neighborhoods and most importantly, figuring out how she wants to spend her life. Through her race and wealth, Esperanza has created her identity as a shy, poor, and ambitious person. Through her race and wealth, Esperanza feels limited to opportunities that she may want to try. To begin with, Esperanza is very shy when it comes to her race and wealth. She knows that people like her should not speak up because they have very little power in society. As stated in the text, “Everything is fine until the nun who knows all the canteen kids by heart looks at me and says: You, who sent you here? And since I am shy, I don't say anything, just hold out my hand with the letter” (44). This demonstrates how Esperanza wants to eat lunch at school like all the other kids, but since she is seen as an impecunious person, she had to cry to be able to stay. She was too shy to speak for herself and as a result was full of melancholy while eating her lunch. In addition, the financial state of Esperanza and her family contribute to a factor that has shaped her identity. Esperanza is not pleased with her wealth and wishes for more. In the first chapter, she describes her home starting with a good, optimistic tone but as she explained more, her tone felt ashamed: “Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. [.....] and the house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom-Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny” (4). This shows that the family does not have enough money to live a sustainable and comfortable life. Later in the book, it mentions how there is a desire for “white people” homes and towns with large homes and space. Although, Esperanza does not admit that she is poor, she surely hints to it multiple times throughout the novella. Lastly,
Have you ever felt like the place you belonged to didn’t belong to you? In The House on Mango Street, this is how the main character, Esperanza, felt. The author, Sandra Cisneros, did a good job in portraying a girl who couldn’t find her place. She had a problem accepting where she was from, The House on Mango Street is heartfelt novel and is great to pass the time. In this story, you will be shown the lives of Esperanza, her sister Nenny, their two best friends Rachel and Lucy, and the many people who lived on Mango Street. This book is about a girl who went from denying her place to accepting it.
Esperanza is new to the neighborhood, and was never proud of her previous houses, but the negative intonation that the nun uses on her makes her feel like she is being judged, not on who she is, but what her family can afford. There is the place Esperanza now has to call home and the degrading presumption that the neighborhood already has causes her to accept that she can’t change her image without money and let her personality shine through. She seems to accept her label as poor in the story, “A Rice Sandwich”, where she believes the special, also known as rich, kids get to eat in the canteen and she wants to be part of that narrative, so she begs her mother for three days, to write her a note to allow her eat in the canteen. When she couldn’t endure her daughter’s nagging anymore, she complied. Thinking this would be enough affirmation, Esperanza went to school the next with the note and stood in the line with the other kids. She wasn’t recognized by the nun who checks the list, and has to face Sister Superior, who claims that she doesn’t live far enough to stay at school and asks Esperanza to show where her house is. “That one? She said, pointing to a row of ugly three -flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn’t my house,”(45). Esperanza was compared to the most raggedy men, and had to accept
Imagine feeling like you don’t belong and never will, or that the odds of your success is a slim chance to none. The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, leads us into a world of poverty, broken dreams, and slithers of hope. The House on Mango Street follows the life of a young girl by the name of Esperanza Cordero, who occupies her childhood in an indigent Latino neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The books expresses her dire need to have a place where she can call home, and escape the harsh reality of her expected life. Though, her life on Mango Street is bearable with help of her little sister Nenny, her two best friends Rachel and Lucy, and her other friend Sally. On her journey to adulthood, Sandra Cisneros will show how Esperanza assimilates into a mature young lady, who truly find her identity, and develops emotionally as well as physically.
With all of the bad things going on around Esperanza, she was very optimistic and made the best of everything she could. For example, in chapter one, Esperanza explain how she and her family had always grown up poor and that they always had dreams of one day owning a big beautiful house like the ones that they saw on television. One with a back yard and a basement. When Esperanza's family was forced to move her parents had purchased the first house that they could afford so they wouldn't have to continue paying rent. The house was nothing like what they had spoke of or dreamt about. But Esperanza states, "I then knew I had to have a house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama said. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.." Within this paragraph it shows that Esperanza isn't exactly happy about where she is living but she is going to make the best of it and do what she has to do to get out of there and have a house of her own. One that she can point to.
In the novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the theme of growing up is prevalent throughout the book. Throughout the novel, a young mexican girl named Esperanza goes through experiences as she matures that involve her friends, society, dangers that expose her to the outside world and help her to realize what the real world is like.
Esperanza’s insecurity about where she lives and how she lives is the conflict of the story. A tradition her father, Nenny, and herself has is going to the houses on the hills, she believes she looks like the hungry asking for food so she no longer goes. Esperanza is so ashamed of her house that when someone ask which house she lives in she denies living in those flats. She becomes aware of how poor her family is when she must go to work to help pay for private school, this encourages her to get out of the flats. Esperanza sets out to be able to support herself on her own and buy the house she has been dreaming of since she was little.
The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, is a novel about a young girl growing up in the Latino area of Chicago. It is highly admired and is taught in a plethora of grade schools and universities. The House on Mango Street expresses the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is full of harsh realities and jarring beauty. Esperanza doesn’t want to belong- not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza’s story is of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing what she will become for herself. While Esperanza and the other women have many differences, as in the way she is fortunate to avoid the pitfalls of her environment and others are not, there are just as many
Throughout the novel, Esperanza tells us that she doesn’t like the house on Mango Street. When we first meet her, she tells us about the places that her family have moved. “...Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember” (Cisneros 3). Each time they’ve moved, the kids had to go to a new school and the parents had to find jobs that are closer to them. Meaning that they are learning things that could have learned before or they are just now learning the material and not really understanding the information. When you beg for something your parents you can get it most of the time. “In the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys and girls watched while I cried and ate my sandwich, the bread already greasy and the rice cold” (45). This just shows that begging your parents for something it not always a good idea. Greasy bread and cold rice does not seem too appealing for a lunch meal. Even though Esperanza and her family seem like they have a poor life, they are not really that poor. At least they have a
In the novel, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza has many positive influences on her life. Hardships do not define one’s life either in a mental or physical capacity. Throughout the novel, Esperanza’s grandmother, Marin, and Rosa Vargas enable her to overcome the hardships of becoming a woman.
She is just to use that identity to prove to others who her right self is, rather than the self that does not convey who she is. Near the end of the novel, Esperanza has come to the conclusion that she will not be someone who society had plan out for her, “... but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain… in the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel… I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.” (Cisneros 88,89) Esperanza will not grow up to be ordered around like the other women in her neighborhood. She will be a woman that is beautiful, yet cruel and in the eyes of men, she will be the man. She decides that she will not follow the rules of society like the fact that all a woman can do to escape, is to wait for a man to sweep them off the street. Instead, she will be a “man” of her own self where she will be “beautiful and cruel.” Esperanza will be cruel as she will not “grow up tame” like the women who does so by being scared, afraid, and controlled by their husbands. She is to be beautiful as she will be the one who holds power, and independence where she will depend on her own self. Esperanza changes the use of her identity, from having an identity to only represent her true inner self, to an identity that will change both the rules and paths that society. With the
Esperanza is a shy but a very bright girl. She dreams of the perfect home now, with beautiful flowers in their luscious garden and a room for everyone to live in comfortably all because of the unsatisfied face the nun made that one afternoon--when she moves to the house of Mango Street. She thinks it’s going to be a “grand house on a hill that will have a bedroom for everyone and at least three washrooms so when they took a bath they would not have to tell everybody.” (Cinceros 4) Reality is so different for her when her dream is shot down in a heartbeat when she
2.Some evidence that suggests that Esperenzas family is wealthy is how they own much land.She wears nice silk dresses,the home they live in,the private school she attends,Esperanza explains how she sees her friends that live so far that they can only meet once a week under a tree near all their farms/land, and how she explains her life style .An example
The novel “The House on Mango Street” is written by Sandra Cineros. It deals with family, neighbourhood and dreams of a young Mexican girl, Esperanza Cordero growing up in Chicago. The novel begins when the Corderos move into a new house on Mango Street in the Latino section of Chicago. The fact that it is the first house they have ever owned, make them proud. But when Esperanza sees it, she is disappointed by the red, dilapidated house. It is not the one their
Cisneros' The House on Mango Street is a novel about the importance of not forgetting where you come from. Esperanza, a young Latino girl and the story's main character, wants to
Sandra cisneros novel, The house on mango street, is describing the problems latino face in society. A society that is mostly dominated by men, and a society that is juges women on what they look like, instead of judging them on what's inside. Cisneros wants us to see the daily complications a latina woman must face in order to be treated like everyone else. The novel also talks about how females should be loyal to their husband. And love is not something they should rely heavily on.