Compare And Contrast The Character Of Esperanza In The House Of Mango Street

The House on Mango Street is a story about a teenage latina girl in a Chicago ghetto. Esperanza´s society is dominated by men, who only like women for the way they look, not what’s inside. The House on Mango Street describes how latina women face problems in their society not abling them to fit in, treating them as second class citizens.

When Lucy, Esperanza’s neighbor deceives Esperanza’s mother of being “ugly like…bare feet in September!”, Esperanza immediately defends her side while her sister is acting foolish by telling Lucy and Rachael to “ better get out of my yard before I call my brothers” (Cisneros 37). Although Nenny was being foolish by hollering out the names of clouds, in and out of Esperanza and Lucy’s intense playful conversation; Esperanza shows her true caring and gallant personality by defending her family while having to deal with Nenny’s

The Vargas house is a house which contains countless children with only a single mother to care for them. The Vargas children are known for being savage, vulgar, and impolite. They do not care about anyone or anything including themselves. It is almost an everyday occurrence that these children get into great danger or trouble. Esperanza does not want to be mixed in with these type of people and deal with all this commotion. She makes a mature decision of not associating herself with them and finding other friends. When Esperanza is new to Mango Street she tells her younger sister, Nenny, not to make friends with the Vargas’. As Esperanza grows and matures, she is realizing who she wants her friends to be. Her Ideal friends were perhaps not

Esperanza was glad to be able to live in a different home that they can actually call theirs, but what she doesn’t realize is that they are still being greatly impacted by poverty. She doesn’t realize this partly because her parents have been protecting her and her siblings from the neighbors and the bad things that happen. A good example of her father protecting them is on page 5 when Esperanza says, “Papa has nailed on the windows so we wouldn’t fall out”. This quote goes to show that once again the family is subject to their poverty and that it is almost controlling their lives. Esperanza continues to believe that the neighborhood they live in is safe and that it is a good place to live in until her friend Cathy tells her about the white families in the neighborhood, and how it isn’t good enough. This is when she starts to realize what others think about the place she lives in. On page 28 Esperanza says, “Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we're dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives”.( SThis quote is another really good example of how the poverty that Esperanza grew up in is affecting her life. With Esperanza starting to notice all of these things that are bad about her neighborhood, she begins to get embarrassed about who she is and where she is from. As the book continues, Esperanza continues to grow up and understand the life

Immigration involves moving from our home country to a whole new one in order to start over and have a better life and or future. In Esperanza Rising, Esperanza Just lost her dad and her dad’s step brothers/her uncles burn her house down they decided they have to leave Mexico and become an immigrant.They moved to California and she has to work because her mamma becomes sick, so she needs the money to pay her mammas hospital bills, so she goes to work in migrant worker and her job was to eyeing the potatoes. Although Esperanza faced many challenges as an immigrant, her hardest challenge were not being able to chores because someone else also did it for her, and when esperanza had to go to work in the fields to take care of mamma.

Esperanza has lived her entire life moving from place to place, from bad neighborhood to bad neighborhood. Her past dwellings were old and rickety and the house on Mango Street was no different. “Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in” (4). She was surrounded by people with tragic lives, trapped in poverty and abusive relationships, and saw how much they suffered every day. Her friends dealt with abusive males in their households and they were bound in fear. “But Sally doesn't tell about that time he hit her with his hands just like a dog” (92). Esperanza witnessed these things and decided to let them fuel her motivation to leave Mango Street. She wants to be an independent person owned by no one. Her rage gives her the determinations to escape.

Esperanza is torn between deciding whether she wants to escape Mango Street. She is embarrassed by the superficial appearance of her identity, but appreciates her roots. Her house is a wreck and the neighborhood, probably not much better off. However, she has loving family and friends.

Unfortunately, the death of Esperanza’s father forces her to flee to California and she is forced leave everything behind and live amongst those who are below her. Esperanza travels to California with her mother and previous servants Hortensia, Miguel, and Alfonso. The first main encounter Esperanza experiences of growth is an encounter with a poor girl who wants her doll. Her reaction was to hide her doll instantly because this doll was her last gift from her father and the little girl “… is poor and dirty” (pg. 70). She is surprised that her mother apologizes to the child’s mother. Therefore, the author creates this scene to be the first lesson of kindness Esperanza experiences because her mother makes a yarn doll for the crying child. Although, she is relieved that they get off at the next stop because she doesn’t want to be reminded of her selfish behavior (pg. 72). The reader becomes aware of just how rich and spoiled Esperanza was because she sees an innocent poor child to be so repulsive to her. The author writes about the character’s relief when the child is gone because it proves that she has not changed and is still entitled. However, this event is the first step in Esperanza’s realization and awareness of her selfish ways because she acknowledges that her behavior was selfish.

Nevertheless, being accepted in society is a fundamental part of the growing process of any person. In that regard, finding an identity—understood as a set of characteristics that distinguish a person in a particular group—is a critical part of this process. For Esperanza, the house will allow her to have at least the necessary stability that she needs to go out and face important issues, such as making friends and getting accustomed to a new neighborhood. It is interesting to underline how, intentionally, the author does not give a concrete description of the main character: there is no name, age or physical description of her, except for the fact that the she refers to herself as “me.” This condition may denote Esperanza’s struggle trying to adapt herself to a new community, as the character acknowledges that she does not know who she is; neither knows what place in the world she owns yet; nor what role in her life she wants to play. In addition, the author uses the description of a run-down house—hat makes Esperanza feel ashamed— as a means to portray and reinforce the idea of a character whose personality is still underdeveloped and in the search for her own way to express

Gender role is represented as a social construction in The House on Mango Street. Men are depicted as a solid figure and are looked as a primary force while women are looked down upon and are treated as a sex object. Out of all the female character in the novel, Esperanza is distinctive. She does not see a future where she is subject to anybody. She has interminable dreams of her own. Her dreams of “having a house of her own” (pg. 4) starts at a very young age. As she moves into the new neighborhood in the Mango Street, she gets baffled since it is not the house her parents talked about and also not the real one’s she has seen on

Esperanza “is a young girl surrounded by examples of abused, defeated, worn-out women” (De Valdes). On Mango street, most of the women experience a lack of freedom, compared to their husbands who are free to do whatever they please. Women are commonly left to “stare out of windows, locked indoors waiting for their spouses to return or for something to happen” (Martinez 1). Esperanza’s own great-grandmother “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on their elbow” (Cisneros 11). In addition, “Rafaela, who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets

Esperanza is the main character and narrator of this story. Esperanza is a young lady growing up in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. She and her family are new to this country, which can be assumed because she has memories of the houses back in Mexico (Cisneros 17). The book focuses on Esperanza, her family, her friends, and even her neighbors which all live in the same street. From childhood, to adolescence, Esperanza tells the reader her story and what she lived through as well as those who associated with her. This book is an insight to a Chicano (Mexican-American) family, and the struggles that as such they go through. Esperanza starts the story as a little girl and goes all the way to adulthood throughout her narration. There are other characters involved in the story, such as Esperanza’s family, which are Papa, Mama, Nenny, Carlos, and Kiki. Other relatives and friends are involved in the story as well.

-She does not like the house. It is not their dream house. It is falling apart. The family owns this house, so they are no longer subject to the whims of landlords, and at the old apartment, a nun made Esperanza feel ashamed about where she lived. The house on Mango Street is an improvement, but it is still not the house that Esperanza wants to point out as hers.

I also loved that scene where she meets the actor and insists on calling him Bobby. The line that stood out to me particularly was when the Bible-reading lady says, "I saw your eyes wide open, as if that white man was handing you salvation" (251). I felt like that summed up Esperanza's whole world view up until that point. That rich white man was everything that America was supposed to be. America was supposed to be this place where Esperanza could soak in luxury and buy everything she ever wanted, but it was all a facade. America turned out to be dirty too, and it was a place where she had to work so hard to barely scrape by. In that moment, I feel like her world view begins to change as she sees things for what they really

The main character, Esperanza, lives in a poor family that consists of six people. Even though she lives in a poor family her siblings and her still find a way to be as happy as possible. Esperanza has lots of responsibilities in which come with having a larger sized family. Another thing that you must have when living in a small house with a big family is respect.