Esperanza's Insecurity In The House On Mango Street

A time in the story where Esperanza feels ashamed of her home is when a nun points “...to a row of ugly three-flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into" (94), and asks if one of the homes belongs to Esperanza. Even though the house did not really belong to Esperanza, she knew her real house wasn't much nicer than the houses the nun pointed to. Esperanza also shows negativity when she complains about her name. Esperanza didn't always like the name she was given, because she doesn't want to end up like her great grandmother, who was forced into marriage, and is basically trapped inside. Esperanza inherited her name, but "[doesn't] want to inherit her place by the window" (51). Esperanza also shows a negative attitude is when she explains that her name “...means sadness, it means

In Sandra Cisnero’s novella, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza sees the importance of learning about her sexuality as she is growing up from her childhood to adolescence. In the first vignette, “The Family of Little Feet,” Esperanza and her two other friends receive three pairs of “dancing shoes” which they all are excited about. They get the idea to put them on and walk around town showing off how beautiful the shoes are. They feel good and special in front of everyone up until Mr. Benny at the grocery store notices the girls and asks, “Your mother know you got shoes like that? Them are dangerous. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops” he threatens (41). At first, Esperanza and her friends don’t pay attention to what Mr. Benny

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

Esperanza is faced with several major events that forces her to mature at a young age. In these events readers can see how she grows as her emotions change. In the beginning of the book, Esperanza’s father passes away (p. 22) and their family home on the ranch, El Rancho de las Rosas, catches on fire (p.40). This is the beginning of Esperanza's quickly changed young life. As a young girl she realizes life will never be the same. She once was wealthy and lived life with the help of housekeepers. Papa also had field workers to help with his needs on the farm. Raised with a positive perspective on life, her hopes and dreams are soon challenged. Esperanza is forced to leave everything she has ever known to move to the United States. The fire is symbolic because the family is forced start all over, in life, along with her social

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.

Esperanza, a strong- willed girl who dreams big despite her surroundings and restrictions, is the main character in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Esperanza represents the females of her poor and impoverished neighborhood who wish to change and better themselves. She desires both sexuality and autonomy of marriage, hoping to break the typical life cycle of woman in her family and neighborhood. Throughout the novel, she goes through many different changes in search of identity and maturity, seeking self-reliance and interdependence, through insecure ideas such as owning her own house, instead of seeking comfort and in one’s self. Esperanza matures as she begins to see the difference. She evolves from an insecure girl to a

Esperanza is forever marked by the house and neighborhood she lives in. She wants to be like other kids who are allowed to eat their lunch at school instead of having to go home everyday. These students live father from the school than she does. Esperanza assumes these children live in better houses and neighborhoods. She is embarrassed by her house and angry that she must be identified by it. As said by Sister Superior, “I bet I can see your house from my window. Which one? Come here. Which one is your house?” The sister points to an ugly row of houses in the general direction of Esperanzas address.

Lindsey Rietzsch once said “A negative attitude drains, a positive attitude energizes.” This quote means that having a negative attitude lowers your self versus having a positive attitude where is actually increases attitude and it energizes you by inspiring you. “The House on Mango Street” sets up in Chicago, where the narrator(Esperanza) lives on Mango Street. The House on Mango Street that Esperanza lives in is really bad condition and old. It is so small that the narrator has to share beds in the same room with her family. Esperanza begins to lower her self esteem because she does not like where she lives and every time when some asks, “Where do you live?” She wants a real house that she could point to and she thinks the House On Mango street is not. But later, along the times, Esperanza’s negativity of herself begins to slowly change by looking at nature and take a closer look at the environment she lives in. Cisnero shows that knowing and being able to accept where our background is from is an important part of growing in life also as determining the real you.

Esperanza and Mholo are similar in the manner they have each faced the challenges associated with a humbling living situation. Deeper than their living situations they both have experienced dealings with social class and cultural differences and the stereotyping resulting from them. Mholo secretly stays with her sister in the basement of a very well off family. When madam of the family ushers Mholo off the property, rather show her a little hospitability and allow her wait for her sister. Suggests the madam was uncomfortable with Mholo’s presence because she was different than her family. Esperanza lives with her entire family in a small one bedroom one bath house in a neighborhood with a less than respectable reputation attached to it. Esperanza

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

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.

“He who falls today may rise tomorrow. ” When you are forced out of your home and have to live somewhere totally different with totally different people, that is called immigration. Lots of people, including Esperanza, have to do this. Esperanza Ortega was a 13 year old girl forced out of her rich, Mexican life to go to the United States and work tough jobs, discrimination, and lots of challenges.

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

In addition, her dream displays that Esperanza wants to be safe and not in another person’s home. The girls her age hope that the man they marry will whisk them away to this dream home and Esperanza wants that, but wants the wealth and not the husband. She is still a young girl and has not matured all the way being that she wants multiple bathrooms. She is thinking of moving in with her family instead of her husband. Even though the stress of wealth and marriage is piled onto numerous teenagers in her position, it has not hit her as intently yet. Esperanza’s dream house shows that she is a dreamer and believes that one day she will receive that house. She desires to grow up, but does not want to jump into adulthood yet, she wants to stick one toe in, instead of jumping in. In conclusion, Esperanza’s dream of having an upperclass home expresses that she wants to change for the better and that she is still

When Esperanza goes to mourn the death of Lucy and Rachel’s baby sister she meets the three sisters. They talk to her for a little bit and tell her to make a wish. Once she made the wish they all told her that it will one day come true just like that. One of the sisters pulls her aside and tells her what people living on Mango Street have already told her. That she must come back to Mango Street when she is older for the people that can not leave. She will always be Mango Street as one of the sister says, “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street”(105). Esperanza was speechless leaving Mango Street for the house that she had always wanted