The House On Mango Street Literary Analysis

Sandra Cisneros uses characterization to show that even when there is bad times you can still find your true self in The House on Mango Street. Esperanza is the main character and she feels lonely, embarrassed, and just wants to fit in her new neighborhood. She is having a hard time trying to find her identity. Esperanza wants to change her name “…more like the real me” instead of accepting a name from her family’s heritage, “…the one nobody sees” (Cisneros 11). She thinks her name sounds rough when her classmates say it, but sounds softer in Spanish.

In English Esperanza’s name means, “hope” (Cisneros 10), but in Spanish, it means “sadness” (Cisneros 10) and “waiting” (Cisneros 10). The word “hope” (Cisneros 10) adds a positive connotation to her name, but the words “sadness” (Cisneros 10) and “waiting” (Cisneros 10), add a negative connotation to the name. Cisneros character doesn’t like her name because she has inherited it from her great-grandmother who she describes as a “wild horse of a woman” (11), who did not want to get married, but was eventually forced into it. She never forgave her husband and spent her whole life looking out the window. Esperanza states that she does not want to inherit her great-grandmother’s “place by the window” along with her name. She wants to change her name to something that shows her true, secret self. Esperanza says; “I would like to baptize myself under a real name, a name more like the real me.” (Cisneros 11) She decides that a name such as Zeze the X would be

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.

As the book progresses, Esperanza witnesses the emerging sexuality of her peers and begins to encounter her own sexuality, too. This is a confusing state to be in, and Cisneros captures the confusion by blending these moments of sexual exploration with the brutality of gendered violence. Men beat their wives and daughters, and in most cases the sexual encounters in The House on Mango Street are unwanted. The boys and men of this book tend to take things, while the girls and women deal with the consequences. Esperanza knows all this already, and it contributes greatly to her desire to

In the novel, The House on Mango Street by Saundra Cisneros, the author characterizes Esperanza as unconfident and optimistic. In doing so, Cisneros uses symbolism and figurative language to capture Esperanza’s character growth throughout the novel. In the vignette, “My Name”, Cisneros characterizes Esperanza as unconfident. In doing so, Cisneros uses symbolism to demonstrate how Esperanza feels about her name and the effects it might have on her. Cisneros states Esperanza’s great-grandmother is one of the many women in the novel who look out the window and long for escape.

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

She is just to use that identity to prove to others who her right self is, rather than the self that does not convey who she is. Near the end of the novel, Esperanza has come to the conclusion that she will not be someone who society had plan out for her, “... but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain… in the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel… I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.” (Cisneros 88,89) Esperanza will not grow up to be ordered around like the other women in her neighborhood. She will be a woman that is beautiful, yet cruel and in the eyes of men, she will be the man. She decides that she will not follow the rules of society like the fact that all a woman can do to escape, is to wait for a man to sweep them off the street. Instead, she will be a “man” of her own self where she will be “beautiful and cruel.” Esperanza will be cruel as she will not “grow up tame” like the women who does so by being scared, afraid, and controlled by their husbands. She is to be beautiful as she will be the one who holds power, and independence where she will depend on her own self. Esperanza changes the use of her identity, from having an identity to only represent her true inner self, to an identity that will change both the rules and paths that society. With the

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.

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)

Esperanza was ashamed of the house she lived in, the clothes she wore, her appearance and even her name. Esperanza’s confidence was already extremely low. For instance, she was talking to a nun at her school about being able to eat lunch at school because she lived to far away to walk home and eat. The nun glared out the window and pointed at a rundown house and asked if Esperanza lived there. Even though she did not live there, Esperanza replied, “Yes.” After the nun made this rude remark, Esperanza cried because she was disappointed that the nun thought it was her house. She let the nun get the best of her. It is crucial to keep a positive attitude and try your hardest to make the best of your situation, as it will enable you to live a happier life and be more successful in what you do. Although at times Esperanza was humiliated and embarrassed, such as when Tito and Sally started to laugh at her when she tried to stop them from kissing Sally, she didn’t let these situations keep her down. Esperanza was sad that one of her good friends would do such a thing to her, when she was only trying to protect her, but continued to persevere and made the best of the

This quotation from the book The House on Mango Street chapter two “My Name” suggests that Esperanza does not like the meaning of her name very much.Esperanza's characterization Of her name shows how she has no satisfaction for her given name. She describes the difference between her name in English versus spanish, you can clearly see which interpretation she favorites more. She sees her na word “hope” to explain her name. She says her name is full of sadness and waiting which is what makes it negative. Even her classmates make fun of her name saying that it has too many syllables.Esperanza also wishes to change her name something that suits her like “ Zeze the X”. The thing that is revealed from Esperanza is that she does not feel comfortable

In "My Name, "She looked out the window her whole life, they way so many women sit, with their sadness on an elbow". Abuse to Rafaela, again subtle because she does not go out, in fear of husband. Poverty on Loomis, Keeler and Paulina; poverty is a way of life. The impact is for all generations, the parents who cannot get out, the children that see it and the little ones who cannot know any better. The opportunities are limited in the barrio. Esperanza was embarrassed when she pointed to her house "there". "There?", as if there was no place for a girl to live. But survival is instinctive and there is a certain amount of barrio pride "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we are dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake." The victim of being called a "rice sandwich". Hurt by the sister superior as she points to a row of ugly houses reminding Esperanza of the sin of being poor.

This relates to the theme of the struggle for self definition, because at first Esperanza was under the impression she could change a man, but as she’s exposed to these horrible encounters she comes to the conclusion that boys and girls live in different worlds.

Cisneros uses simple syntax and tells the story in vignettes to present the story as if it were told in Esperanza’s eyes. Vignettes are short little descriptions of an event or idea. The House on Mango Street is strictly told in vignettes which makes sense as it is told in a child's eyes. These vignettes tend to get larger as the story progresses and as Esperanza becomes more aware of her surroundings. As a result of this, the vignettes not only become more complex, but more mature as well. In vignettes such as “Hairs” and “My Name”, Esperanza writes about simple innocent ideas like what she likes and does not like, but later in the story vignettes such as “The Monkey Garden” and “No Speak English” cover much more mature situations such as the patriarchy and rape in the near-poverty-line Latino neighborhood of Chicago. Esperanza finds herself in these situations because of how she begins to mature and become an independent sexual being. With all of this information in mind, Cisneros uses the power of the vignette convey the fact that Esperanza is becoming an individual sexual being.

"My Name" gives the reader a good idea of the macho stereotypes that dominate Esperanza's life. She tells how she was taught that the year of the horse, the year she was born on, is unlucky for females. Although Esperanza understands the Mexican ideal of an obedient woman, she completely rejects the lifestyle. "She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong." The strong tone Esperanza writes in shows her admiration of her great grandmother's free spirit as a "horse woman," which is much like her own. The metaphor shows how like the independent, free animal, some are doomed to be captured, trained, and ruled by men. Like a horse, Esperanza's great grandmother was "caught" when "my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off." Esperanza is amaze at the legitimacy of male domination when she says ."..just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier." Here, Esperanza learns to understand that her society refers to women as objects and their worth is determined by their appearance and function.