In Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and Sandra Cisneros’s “The House on Mango Street”, the authors describe their feelings towards the settings in a similar way. In Hemingway’s short story, two waiters at a café describe the differences in their lives and how they see life before them. In Cisneros’s short story, the narrator explains her past, present, and future places of residency and the impact it has in her life. Both settings in each story are different, but also very much alike, because of the people in the stories and the feeling of want and betterment that you get from both the waiters in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and the narrator in “The House on Mango Street”. In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, an old man …show more content…
The House on Mango Street was very small and dilapidated. There was only one bedroom and bathroom for all six of them to share. The front door was too big for the frame and no front yard to play in. Even though this house was far better improvement than past homes, she still had hoped for something bigger and better. The narrator gives a very descriptive view of this future dream home. She says “and inside it [will] have real stairs, not ordinary hallway stairs, but stairs like the houses on T.V… [and] at least three washrooms… and a big yard with grass growing without a fence” (Cisnero’s.552). The story has a theme of disappointment. The narrator keeps hoping for this elaborate home, but just keeps getting disappointed. For the older waiter in “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”, the cafe symbolizes home because he feels that is all the he has. He says that he lacks confidence but he does have a job. He doesn't want to leave the cafe and he feels that others can benefit from such a place as having somewhere to go. The narrator in “The House on Mango Street” realizes that she does not feel she has a place called home. The story symbolizes for her a place of wanting better for herself. She has always known promises, but she has never seen them and she vows to herself to have that one day. The older waiter and Esperanza are alike in that they both believe in something so great for themselves. For example the older waiter
Sally is gorgeous, She wears lots of make-up and short skirts. Boys gossip about her. Her father won't let her out of the house because of her beauty Esperanza wants to be her best friend. She wishes she didn't have to go home after school. Esperanza is two years younger then Minerva. She has two children and is married. Her husband left her only to return later and then leave again.When the kids are asleep she writes poetry. Esperanza and Minerva share poems they wrote. It bothers Esperanza that after her husband comes back and beats her she still takes him back.
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
In conclusion, The House on Mango Street was a very entertaining and was able to hold my interest. It showed me how a different perspective on how people lived. Unique themes were also created to make the story
One example is when she talks to Alicia about their homes. Before they talk, Esperanza states that Alicia gave Esperanza a bag with the “word GUADALAJARA stitched onto it, which is home for Alicia, and one day she will go back there” (106). Here, Esperanza contrasts her temporary home with Alicia’s permanent one. While Alicia has an actual home where she can live for the rest of her life; Esperanza doesn’t and continuously moves to her different “homes”. By comparing her home, she is implying that she wants a home where she can settle and be happy, not like the one on Mango Street. This ultimately shows that she’s not satisfied with her current lifestyle and wants for a better life. Another comparison is when she compares her age and gender with an older man. In the vignette “The First Job”, she lands a job at a photo developer studio where she hides from the other men and women at lunch time because she is scared of them looking at her. Subsequently, she meets a man who says it’s his birthday and asks for a tiny birthday kiss, and she thinks “I thought I would just because he was so old… he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth” (55). Here, Esperanza compares her age and gender with the actions that the older man does. She is working a normal day, then randomly a guy comes up and kisses her directly, without her consent. By showing this example of an old man in the workplace, she is basically stating men, especially older ones, are dangerous by sexually harassing young women such as herself. This means that she doesn’t visualize men as people who she will marry and live a happy life with, but people who are filled with evil. Through comparing and contrasting Esperanza with other characters, a deeper sense of understanding of Esperanza is
In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros uses numerous amounts of metaphors to express how the characters are held down and lack opportunities to move forward in their lives. The use of metaphors also allows Cisneros show the readers the different aspects of the neighborhood. Cisneros highlights metaphors to show how men oppress the value of women, the opportunities which are present for individual characters, and how characters are not able to progress in their lives due to their social surroundings.
There is an apparent unity seen between the old man and the older waiter. Opposite from the young waiter, the older waiter and old man seem devastatingly lonely and worn out by life. While the young waiter is rude and insistently talks down to the old man, the older waiter defends him. He too understands and appreciates a clean, well-lighted café opposed to a bar or bodega. The older men understand each other without there being any communication between them. In the final line the reader is able to truly understand the older waiters view of his own morality, “He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted café was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he went home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally,
The House on Mango Street is a bildungsroman about a young Latina girl, named Esperanza Cordero, who has various struggles while she is searching to determine who she is and where she belongs in this world. The author, Sandra Cisneros, addresses several themes in the book of which three are significant; language barrier, self discovery, and gender roles.
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.
According to talkproverty.org 21.4% of Hispanics in America are living in poverty. A book call The House on Mango Street and a movie call “Stand and Deliver,” represent the struggle of being a Hispanic in America. The House on Mango Street is similar to the movie, Stand and Deliver because the characters were judged based on where they lives, the characters have low self esteem, and the females were expected to take care of family. The House on Mango Street is also different from the movie, “Stand and Deliver,” because of the encouragement the characters received by adults, the relationships the characters build, and the different viewpoint the characters have on where they will be in the future. In my opinion, The House on Mango Street interests me more than “Stand and Deliver,” because the book leaves you wondering what is going to happen next, allows you to imagine the characters, and it has different storylines.
People from all over the world change, change in either mentality, thoughts, maturity, physically, mentally, appearance, feelings and etc. What causes the transformation of that person is important, but how much did it affect them is also crucial. In Sandra Cisneros novel, entitled The House on Mango Street,the story depicts a Latina girl who transform throughout her time being on Mango Street. The girl named Esperanza is to faced obstacles of female oppression that she witnesses in the life of women on her street who they depends on men to bring them out of the street. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros uses characterization to express the
“The House on Mango Street” was written to explain the lives of a family living in poverty in 1984. Coming from Esperanza’s point of view, this book gave her siblings and friends an idea of who the real Esperanza was and what her priorities were. In this book, Esperanza moves from city to city, house to house, with her family hoping for a real house. When she gets to the house on Mango Street, it is not what she expects. She meets new friends and has some crazy experiences. This book has many societal standards but, the most important three are responsibility, happiness, and fitting in.
Response: Esperanza and her family have been moving from place to place everytime because the apartments they lived in would either have broken pipes, be small in size or there wouldn't be enough space to play outside. "We didn't always live on Mango Street. 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." Esperanza never always lived on Mango Street. Before Mango street Esperanza and her family lived in various places. The house on Mango Street is their own house and don't have to pay rent to anybody, share the yard with other people, be careful not to make too noise and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. Even though this house is a major improvement from the previous places, it isn't the house they thought they'd get. The house on Mango Street is a small red house with tight steps in front and small windows. It also has crumbling bricks and a swollen door that you had to push hard to get inside. There is no front yard, but only four little elms that the city planted by the curb and ordinary hallway stairs and
“Only a house as clean as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.” [pg. 108] The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros tells of a young woman named Esperanza growing up, and her experiences in doing so. Some experiences are good, some far from it, but throughout the story, Esperanza utilizes writing to take her mind off things for just a little bit. The book comes to show that using beautiful language in the form of poetry gives Esperanza power over her perspective of life.
The older waiter is much more understanding of the old man’s situation. He knows what it feels like to be lonely. He knows the desire to stay in the light that staves off the darkness, a darkness that brings thoughts of how lonely you really are. There is an emptiness in him can only be filled with the cleanliness and light of the café. He feels that this is the same for the old man.
In the story “A Clean, Well- Lighted Place” by Earnest Hemingway begins with the main character and his co-worker in a café. The two are analyzing, and discussing a deaf, drunk Oldman, who is their last customer of the day. As the deaf old man insists on having more whiskey, the main character informs the young waiter as to why and how the old man tried to commit suicide. They began to converse about the Oldman’s depressed life. The younger waiter is in a rush to go home to his wife, while the older waiter is patient and he stands up for the Oldman, being able to relate to him. Hemingway’s sentence structure and writing style represents the comparison and contrast between setting, people, and objects, along with emphasizing how it is to have and be nothing.