House On Mango Street Symbols

In all aspects of life, women are pressured to be someone they are not. They are put in situations that force them to chose a path of life. In “The House on Mango Street”, Esperanza is forced to think about leaving Mango Street in the future, because she is surrounded by women who are pushing her to become an adult.

The symbol for the theme, everything is not as it appears, relates to Rafaela, Sally, and Esperanza is a bird cage. The girls are trapped in a cage much like beautiful birds are kept from the outside world. However, all the girls dream of becoming worth something to the outside world. Rafaela and Sally are physically trapped by the male figures in their lives, where as Esperanza is mentally trapped within her own insecurities.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up in a different culture? Or face discrimination because of your gender? These are just some of the challenges the character Esperanza encounters in the coming of age novel The House on Mango Street. Written by Sandra Cisneros, this book depicts the life of an adolescent girl named Esperanza. The novel covers her time spent in a racially separated neighborhood where she experiences the hardships that come with being a girl in her time and culture. Self-discovery, the responsibilities of women, and the clash of two different cultures are all major themes throughout the story.

When I grow up, I want to be a black gum tree. Black gum trees are known for their internal strength. Instead of dwelling on outward beauty, they spend more time focusing on their inner growth and developing their core. Only after they have achieved this goal can they produce beautiful fruits that draw animals near to them. Any surfaces that the berries touch are stained as to say, “I was here and made a permanent difference.” After they have utilized their outward influences, they use their internal scars and hollow places to protect the animals surrounding around it. If human lives were to reflect the concepts of the black gum tree, governments, individuals, and communities would be radically transformed. While this is a beautiful image,

When first coming to this country as a Hispanic American you may face a lot of difficulties and find more problems than the average white American. Hispanic people go through different adversities and have trouble overcoming them. In The House on Mango Street the main character Esperanza is the one that narrates the story, she explains what it is like to live on Mango Street. She shows the readers that living on Mango Street is perceived as a terrible area, if one were looking from the outside in. But those that live there feel that they live in fair living conditions. The fact is most of the people who live on Mango Street don 't know what it 's like to live outside of mango street. In the story, they show a lifestyle that most Hispanic people deal with especially the ones that come to America and have to figure out how to make ends meet. In The House on Mango Street, the novel has many themes and problems, such as gender inequality, stereotypes, and language barriers. With short stories like "Aria" and "the myth of Latin Woman," a solution is always found. Sometimes there is a simple solution and other times, it is not so easy to find, or there 's just no solution to solving the characters problems and they are still trying to look for results.

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.

In stories there will be objects that will constantly be mentioned within the story. This is what is known as Symbolism. Symbolism is the use of object, name, or person to represent an idea. If a name is being use, a name such as autumn can represent the adulthood of a human. Creatures such as an Eagle, represents ‘Freedom’ and ‘America’. Even inanimate objects can represent ideas; the light bulb represents ideas that just sparked into a character’s head.

The House on Mango Street,written by Sandra Cisneros, deals with a mexican girl named Esperanza, who grows up and dreams big in Chicago. Cisneros uses imagery, theme, and symbols to describe many things from Esperanza 's perspective. Imagery is used to describe items and people in a meaningful way. Cisneros uses various themes to show various ideas and beliefs. The symbols used describe objects and figures to portray ideas on a deeper level. Cisneros employs unique literary elements in The House on Mango Street that reflect meaningful ideas and beliefs through the narration of Esperanza.

Throughout the story, symbolism is used to connect readers to real life house that represents perfection and slavery, showing how important it is to pitch in around the house. The lions and children are some examples. These symbolize fear and intimidation along with ruling and ownership. Imagination is so powerful and these symbols exercise this theory. The nursery in the short story shows an endless array of imagination and dreams. Symbolism is an author's craft

Culture, ethnicity, family, sexuality, and society are all factors that can influence a person’s identity. A combination of all these elements usually result in the successful discovery of self-identity. Preadolescents and adolescents often find themselves in a constant battle attempting to find who they are or who they want to be. Adolescents are faced with questions like, What do you want to be when you grow up? What colleges are you looking into? What are your plans after high school?. In a normal process of growth, teens experiment with new activities in order to find their identity, but this is not the case for every teen. Some adolescents do not go through the normal process of experimentation for various reasons.

The short story by Sandra Cisneros revolves truly around the tittle “The House on Mango Street” and how her family moved from places to places to get there. The recollection of the street names her family lived on and how every time they moved “there’d be one more of us” added to the authors focus of emphasizing how important the word “home” meant to her throughout the story. The family of six included Mama, Papa, brothers Carlos and Kiki, and sister Nenny.

When children are born the difference between whether the baby is a girl or boy depends on their chromosomes. The difference is that girls chromosomes are 46XX and boys are 46XY. This does not give boys any more authority in society than women, yet many women still feel inferior to men. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros when writing, creates a separation between men and women in society. She focuses on how the men feel as though they have more authority over women. Cisneros takes each woman and makes each one of them them weak. By doing this, Cisneros makes it feel as though these women are owned by the men in their community. She explicitly talks about these women being abused and restricted by men to instill a lesson that

An example of a symbol in the novel is the beach roses. In the book, Cadence and Gat took walks together. During one of those walks, Cadence and Gat notice lined up beach roses and that memory stayed with Cadence. She said “Beach roses lined the path, deep pink”. (Lockhart pg. 15) She says “their smell was faint and sweet”. (Lockhart pg. 15) Those beautiful beach roses symbolized Cadence and Gat’s beautiful relationship. Summer 17 arrives and it all changes. Cadence finds an envelope of dried up beach roses. She was thrilled at the fact that Gat did that for her. She must have been hallucinating though, because Gat was dead. The dried roses will symbolize Gat and Cadence’s relationship because it’s dead and “dry”. The beach roses are a prime example of symbolism, but something as large as a house can also symbolize something.

Coming-of-age, the transition between childhood and adulthood, is a confusing and difficult time of discovering oneself. Prejudice from others based on race, gender, or economic status only makes growing up more challenging. Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Esperanza in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street experience the ideological maturity toward womanhood while encountering problems most do not face until adulthood. Living in conservative Alabama where racial tension is high, Scout must learn to be compassionate when her father Atticus Finch defends African-American Tom Robinson against a white woman. Growing up on Mango Street, an impoverished neighborhood of Chicago, Esperanza faces being a poor, colored girl in a world meant for rich, white men. The girls must learn to overcome the classist, racist, and sexist societies surrounding them as they come-of-age. Scout and Esperanza learn to understand and overcome the hypocrisy in racial and gender standards; however, Scout learns to understand others’ perspectives of the world through her encounters with classism and racism whereas Esperanza learns to be autonomous despite challenges from her ethnicity and the impetus to rely on sexuality.

Analyze the relationship between an individual and their cultural identity and family within The House on Mango Street and This is How You Lose Her. As shown through the short story collection House on Mango Street, a theme commonly mentioned is the constant desire to change one’s name, their background or ignore their cultural heritage in the hope of fitting in with others. In “My Name,” Esperanza wishes to change her name because of the complicated letters used in it. She says “In English, my name means hope.