Mango Street Metaphors

The neighborhood is not exactly a pretty place as Esperanza describes it. She says, “here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful” (39). In the one year of Esperanza’s life that this book covers, she is raped, abused, and sees the death of the only person who would listen to her poetry- “Her name was Aunt Lupe and she was beautiful like [her] mother” (70). Her discontent with the neighborhood surrounding the house on Mango Street and the rough times that she experienced caused her to want to move away from

She says they are skinny but were strong enough to grow through the concrete. Esperanza believes her strength is also hidden but is still there. I liked this chapter because of the metaphor between her and the trees. I also liked that somethings seemingly small like four trees could have an impact on how Esperanza thinks. These trees have no purpose except to be what they are. Esperanza feels the same way about herself.

Throughout the book Cisneros employs idiomatic phrases that increases brevity of writing and express various meanings. For example the phrase, ¨But I know how those things go. [5]. Esperanza does not believe that her house on mango street will disappear from her life. Although her parents say it is only ¨ẗemporary¨, in her head she is articulating and considering if her parents really mean what they said. This may have occurred previously multiple times in her life where her parents say that their current house is temporary and a better house will come later. Yet they still have not achieved the house they desire. The author shows the readers that Esperanza is intellectual as she contains the ability to foreshadow future events based on

In the collection of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops the theme that people should not be devalued because of their financial circumstances through metaphors of classism, the motif of shame, and the contrast between minor characters Alicia and Esperanza’s mother. Esperanza, the protagonist, is a Mexican-American adolescent living in the rural Chicago region. She occupies a house on Mango Street with her father, mother, two brothers, Carlos and Kiki, and little sister, Nenny. Mango Street is filled with low-income families, like Esperanza’s, trying to adapt to their difficult circumstances. Esperanza realizes it is difficult, but she dreams of leaving her house and Mango Street altogether.

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

Throughout the course of Mango Street, Esperanza’s relationship towards her house change. As time passes her feelings about the house itself change and the emotional impact of the house of her changes as well. Esperanza’s house on Mango Street symbolizes her Mexican culture. For so long she has wanted to leave it. She envisions a different type of life than what she is used to - moving from house to house. “this house is going to be different / my life is going to be different”. One can look at all the things she envisions - the "trappings of the good life" such as the running water, the garden etc. as symbols for the new life.

In conclusion, we know that Esperanza’s negativity of herself begins to slowly change as she slowly experience what accepting means and how she began to accept where she was from . Throughout this book, Cisnero showed us accepting is an important part of growing in life as well as determining the true you. In the beginning she hated her life always wanted to escape out of Mango Street versus the end she says she is going to come back. From the beginning to the end, Esperanza finally accepted where she was from and how Mango Street has developed who she became

“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.

The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros, is a novel about a young girl growing up in the Latino area of Chicago. It is highly admired and is taught in a plethora of grade schools and universities. The House on Mango Street expresses the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is full of harsh realities and jarring beauty. Esperanza doesn’t want to belong- not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza’s story is of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing what she will become for herself. While Esperanza and the other women have many differences, as in the way she is fortunate to avoid the pitfalls of her environment and others are not, there are just as many

repetition to show Esperanza's helplessness and childlike understanding of the world. Originally, Cisneros compares clouds to soft objects of childhood safety while using simile to highlight Esperanza's carefreeness: "...Because [today] the world was full of clouds, the kind like pillows" (Cisneros 33). Due to her environment, Esperanza lives a life lacking in beauty; a life in which, "Butterflies are too few and so are flowers and most things beautiful" (Cisneros 33). Accordingly, since she is a child, she only has been able to search, and hope to find, what beauty there is in her life. Esperanza is in no position to change her fate, as her age holds her back, so all

As a young girl Esperanza is asked one day where she lived by a nun from her school who happened to be walking by. Now before this moment Esperanza never really notice her living situation, all she knew is that her parents loved her and wanted her to go to school. When the nun rudely said “You live there” (Cinceros 5) and pointed at the shoddy apartment building, it is then Esperanza started to build a dream inside of her head because of the look on the nun’s face, unsatisfactory.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros uses many rhetorical devices to push her viewpoint of how sexual maturity and individuality come with age and experience. Cisneros’ effective use of symbols, syntax, and tone convey and persuade Esperanza’s upbringing.

It means sadness, it means waiting” (10). Not only is Esperanza’s name a way to trace her origin but it is also symbolic to the book as a whole. Her name illustrates how the Spanish inside her is sad and it is putting her in a position that is weighing her down and keeping her from becoming someone. The English counterpart is what is keeping her going and motivated to find a way to escape Mango Street and all it encompasses. Just like a genuine immigrants dream when they come to America, Esperanza’s name means “hope” and she uses this hope for a better life to “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away” (110). Cisneros uses the name of her character to give her a place in a Latino setting and start expounding on her thoughts and feelings that come with that life.

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.

“until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor”.(Cisneros 9) This is how Esperanza describes herself before she has made any friends in her new neighborhood. When she says that she is a balloon it is showing her loneliness and the balloon being red describes how she is standing out in