House On Mango Street Identity Analysis

In “The House on Mango Street” gender socialization is a major theme incorporated throughout the novel. Accordingly, Esperanza expresses her own feminist views through her storytelling of her female friends and role models that are in her life. These women help Esperanza build her own identity through giving her awareness of what is expected of women and therefore helping her embrace women empowerment and the breaking of gender roles.

Growing up on Mango Street, girls had to take two steps backward to take one forward. Just like ballroom dancing, women let men take the lead and sacrifice an extra step to continue moving on the floor. When Sally escaped from her father and married the marshmallow salesman, she had to give up her youth and femininity.

In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros creates the theme that when a young girl is growing up without role models and a community that doesn’t support her development, she will have uncertainty in her identity and will search for her way out of the endless cycle. Cisneros does this through the main character, Esperanza. Cisneros creatively weaves the uncertain identity though many of the vignettes, but the vignettes that have the strongest meaning are number one and four. In vignette one, “The House on Mango Street,” Esperanza describes the places that she’s lived before

Our families are the people we grew up around, whether they are our blood relatives or not. They are the people that make you who you are, though they might not always be around. In the story “House on Mango Street, Esperanza's family plays a huge role in shaping her identity. Throughout the story we are shown how her family, community, culture, and gender impacted her character and actions. In her community, there are Hispanic minorities and people who have lived more unfortunate lives. In fact, her family is a part of this group. Not only are people prejudiced against because of their culture, but the women face sexism from both outsiders and people in their community. Although our identities are influenced by a multitude of factors, the family we are surrounded by in our adolescence end up shaping our identities the most.

In “The House on Mango Street”, the young daughter desires to leave her neighborhood as a way to escape her Mexican-American culture. One of the cultures which are most powerful in this story is the Hispanic culture that Esperanza and all of her neighbors emerge from. Her Hispanic culture has such a powerful influence on her

The most important Theme in The House on Mango Street is identity. Identity is a very

“I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I’m me. One day I’ll jump out of my skin. I’ll shake the sky like a hundred violins” (60). In the story “The House on Mango Street”, the author Sandra Cisneros uses sentences full of imagery, metaphors, and word games, to show how self definition is a result of the people and places surrounding you. This is represented throughout the book when Esperanza wants to change her name, living in a male dominated society, and when she wishes for a new home.

“Born Bad” is the vignette I chose to address from The House on Mango Street. I didn’t find it to be significant at first because of the style of writing the author uses. I’ve not read any books using little vignettes as chapters. This style of writing makes me feel like I am reading about situations that seem random and disconnected. Esperanza was born on the evil day, what does this really have to do with her being a woman and not fitting in on Mango Street? Lucy, Rachel, and Esperanza made fun of Aunt Lupe the day she died, a sad event but what does that have do with her being a foreigner on Mango Street?

The Novel, The House on Mango Street, was based on the writer Sandra Cisneros. She was writing this when she was living in Chicago. She was like Esperanza. She want though poverty. She has been heartbroken and deeply joyous. She inventing for herself who and what she will become. This is the life of Esperanza Cordero and based on Sandra Cisneros to all women out there.

In defining one’s identity, many different factors are considered; such as one’s nationality, characteristic, personality, ability, experience, religion, and etc. Especially for those people who live in America, so called country of immigration, has much more complicated identities than those Asian country people where mixed people are rarely noticed. Thinking about the concept of identity, some people easily categorized themselves as simple factors and terms which could describe their surface; white, black, Asian, European, pretty, ugly, nice, mean and so on and so forth. And that is the most point where majority people stopped to list their identities from exploring more in complicated range. However, there are many people who dig more than common people; one great example would be Denise Chavez, who is the author of the novel called Loving Pedro Infante, who kept asking herself about her identity to approach more accurate and clear ideas. In her work, reader could see the confusion of Tere, the main character of the novel, went through her life as Latin-American female in dealing with finding one’s true identity and how she accept her as who she really is. Denise Chavez, who is obviously Latin-American lady, mirror her own life experience through the character she created and introduce to readers about tough life she lived in America as Mejicana. The main character of this novel have a clear understanding and strong idea about herself throughout the novel, even if

The novel, The House on Mango Street, focuses on a young girl who strives to figure out her identity. She continuosly struggles to find her confidence, along with who she is. People tend to struggle with self-acceptance due to society. Society analyzes each person and dissects every one of their flaws, making them want to change themselves to fit expectations. Moving to her new home, Esperanza began to spend all of her time embarrassed. She was ashamed of her new home, and also uncomfortable with her outside appearance. She felt as if her outside didn’t convey the true personality hidden inside her. All Esperanza understood was that she didn’t fit in, and that she is different. Esperanza tries to find the person she truly wants to

“I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn’t seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn’t seem mine either” (The House on Mango Street p.98) As a person matures they learn new things about themselves and develop their identity. People mature through certain experiences they go through and the issues they personally face. In Esperanza’s case as the novel progressed she changed and matured. Identity changes drastically as a person matures, through point of view, conflict, and setting the author of The House on Mango Street convey’s this.

In the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Magdalena’s identity is shaped throughout her childhood by poverty, her hopes/desires, and disappointment.

The House on Mango Street is a novel written by Sandra Cisneros about a young girl named Esperanza Cordero, and her transition from childhood into adulthood. Although Cisneros used many different symbolic objects to use as a way to represent Esperanza’s thoughts and feelings, she chose to use shoes in particular as something to represent Esperanza’s loss of innocence as she grows up on Mango Street.

Everyone has challenges in their life, their feelings behind their actions make them who they are. In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros there are many conflicts which explore the characters, to get to know them closer. The internal conflict is used to discover the identity of the main character, Esperanza.