The House On Mango Street Essay

In today’s world there are countless social problems. People are often treated as an inferior or as if they are less important for many different reasons. In The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros addresses these problems. Throughout the story Cisneros does a thorough job explaining and showing how these issues affect the public. This novel is written through the eyes of a young girl, Esperanza, growing up in a poor neighborhood where the lifestyles of the lower class are revealed. Cisneros points out that, in today’s society, the expectation of women and their treatment, discrimination based on poverty, and discrimination because of a person’s ethnicity are the major

TS: Esperanza changes emotionally once she begins to like boys, particularly a boy in her neighborhood, Sire.

Thesis statement: Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many are trapped in abusive relationships, waiting for others to change their lives. Some are actively trying to change things on their own. Through these women and Esperanza’s reactions to them, Cisneros’ shows not only the hardships women face, but also explores their power to overcome them.

Society has built a role for women. And there’s no better example of this idea than The House on Mango Street, in which Esperanza describes specific moments of her life which lead her to believe in women independence and feminism. She has different ideas and thoughts on the definition of women and what they should be. Esperanza doesn’t fit into the constructed definition Mango Street has of how women should be.

I never had a choice. They decided it all for me and the next thing you know, we

Topic sentence: Cisneros describes Esperanza’s experiences in the book of being in the same ethnic community which provides comfort to its inhabitants.

Do you know how to get the American Dream? The House on Mango Street is about a group of Latinos trying to get over obstacles so they can achieve the American Dream. The biggest obstacles that the people on Mango street face in achieving the American dream are language, discrimination, poverty and education.

subject to what she is told to do by her husband. That is, due to past

Currently Sandra Cisneros resides in San Antonio in a purple house and she describes herself as “nobody’s mother” and “nobody’s wife.” Both Frida Kahlo’s and Cynthia Y. Hernandez’s works convey the idea of having one’s culture limit one’s freedom and individuality. Cisneros and Esperanza are both victims of this idea and realize that the only way to live one’s life freely is to defy the roles and limitations created by one’s culture.

Esperanza is torn between deciding whether she wants to escape Mango Street. She is embarrassed by the superficial appearance of her identity, but appreciates her roots. Her house is a wreck and the neighborhood, probably not much better off. However, she has loving family and friends.

Esperanza isn't like the others she doesn't care to get married, raise children, and live in a house on mango street. She liked to read and write. She would get books from the library and read them and tell her friends about what she learned from reading, “The Eskimos got thirty different names for snow, I say. I read it in a book. ”(35)

This girl, who is slowly maturing into a woman, does not want a jaded life that is controlled by men but instead wants to have independence. The numerous events that occurred during Esperanza’s childhood may have affected her by giving her the tendency to be around bad things but she herself can decide her own future with her efforts.

“They were always waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her (their) life” (Cisneros 27). Esperanza’s mother claims to her daughter that, “I (she) could’ve been somebody, you know?” (Doyle). But, could she really have been somebody even if she tried?

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros covers a year in the life of Esperanza, a Chicana who is around twelve years of age when the novel starts. Amid the year, she moves with her family into a house on Mango Street, the first house her family has ever owned. Be that as it may, the house is not what Esperanza has longed for, in light of the fact that it is smaller. The house is in the focal point of a swarmed Latino neighborhood in Chicago, a city where huge numbers of poor regions are racially isolated. Esperanza does not have any protection, and she settles that she will someday leave the town.

and obey and respect their husband or the men in the house. “Babli could never comfort him. She wasn’t womanly or tender the way that