Sandra Cisneros Use Figurative Language In The House On Mango Street

In the world of Esperanza's childhood, there is a separate universe between boys and girls (and, accordingly, between men and women). Esperanza and the other children of the barrio learn the intricacies of their gender roles by watching neighbors treat each other in certain ways. The fact that these gender roles are already so clear to Esperanza and the other children is indicative of their prominence in their society; instead of a bunch of kids playing together, they are already boys and girls, divided into two separate worlds.

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

Esperanza is not comfortable with exposing her friend Sally and portraying her as an object, but no other women care about it. She decided to take matters into her own hands but only ended getting laughed at. She was not ready to be developed sexually and would rather remain at a slow pace. This idea is different compared to many women in her society who are ok with being mistreated like this.

In the vignette “Beautiful and Cruel”, Cisneros uses syntax to help establish the insecurities and lack of self-confidence that Esperanza has about herself. The vignette is toward the end of the book, from this we know how much self-confidence Esperanza is lacking. Cisneros starts to Establish Esperanza’s character by how insecure she is by comparing her to her sister. This shows that Esperanza is a little jealous of her sister and is shown when she talks about how Nenny is the pretty one and can get away with allot of things. Nenny wants to pick her husband and she can say that because she looks the way she does. Esperanza has decided that she doesn’t want a husband because she thinks that because the way she thinks because of the way she

AEC Paragraph: Situational Irony in The House on Mango Street In “The House On Mango Street”, Cisneros uses (situational) irony to show and express the environment Esperanza lives in and the people she lives around. A major irony of the story is that Esperanza’s family had decided to move into a house of their own because they wanted to feel a sense of safety and security. Mango Street is anything but safe and secure and the house is nothing the family dreamed of having. Esperanza explains, “It’s not the house we’d thought we’d get” (3).

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.

The vignette “Beautiful and Cruel,” conveys the impact it has on Esperanza. In this vignette, Esperanza feels that she is “an ugly daughter” and “the one nobody cares about” (Cisneros 88). She does not need, or want, a man to lead her life, unlike the women she knows. She does not need, or want, a man to make decisions for her. Unfortunately, she still feels the pressure to look gorgeous and stunning: “Nenny has pretty eyes and it’s easier to talk that way

“She walks, she talks, she cleans, she works, she IS, but she is NOT, all at once. She is here, but part of her is elsewhere for eternity” (Anonymous). This quote by an anonymous person illustrates a woman who is rooted in who she is but dreams to be someone else. She dreams to be another person, far away from her dreary life. Sandra Cisneros establishes that many young girls within the Hispanic culture represented in The House on Mango Street are forced into roles they do not wish to take, resulting in a loss of identity and ultimately, a sense of powerlessness in the girl without anyone to show her how to be powerful.

In the novel, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza has many positive influences on her life. Hardships do not define one’s life either in a mental or physical capacity. Throughout the novel, Esperanza’s grandmother, Marin, and Rosa Vargas enable her to overcome the hardships of becoming a woman.

In the novel,The House on Mango Street, Cisneros uses a powerful collection of imagery however, one of the strongest examples would be in the chapter My Name, which displays Esperanza’s insecurities in a land who struggles to accept her. “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting,” (Cisneros pg.10). Esperanza explains the meaning of hope for Hispanic people in a few simple words: sadness and waiting. For millions, it represents the wait of a new life, a better life for them. It’s sadness, knowing many reject them in a land they were promised opportunity. This motif of repudiation and racial discrimination appears frequently throughout the novel which greatly affects Esperanza’s life.

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

Symbolism is key in this novel as Cisneros expresses a lot of information through symbols The concept of the high heels that the girls; Esperanza, Lucy, Rachel, and Nenny had received showed one of their first tastes into their sexual maturity. Beforehand, Esperanza believed that boys in girls live in separate social spheres as shown in the vignette “Boys & Girls” where she discusses how her brothers are best friends and that she wants another friend, specifically a girl, to talk about her feelings and share her secrets with. This is also where Esperanza talks about another key symbol in this story.

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.

Sandra Cisneros the author of “The House on Mango Street” through the literary device metaphor. Sandra uses metaphors in her Poem to compare the name she inherited from her great-grandmother. Sandra Cisneros the author of “The House on Mango Street” uses metaphors to compare the name of the girl with different emotions. Sandra Cisneros uses a metaphor in order to show how Esperanza wants to change her name. Esperanza does not like that her name means sadness and nothing good comes from it.

Language plays a large role in Esperanza’s world, because it tells us more about the characters and takes part in shaping how we see the character. One example of how language affects characters is shown in a scene where Esperanza and Nenny are insulting each other. The text reads, “‘you know what you are, Esperanza? You're like the Cream of Wheat cereal. You're like the lumps’”