“The House on Mango Street,” by Sandra Cisneros uses a narrative style to tell the story of Esperanza throughout her childhood.
Cisneros focuses the novel on Esperanza who is an eight-year-old girl who lives on Mango Street. However, Cisneros uses “The House on Mango Street,” as a semiautobiographical memoir. Throughout the novel Cisneros shows how Esperanza’s voice changes and becomes more mature. She was using Esperanza to tell her story but through the eyes of a child. In the vignette “Red Clowns, (99)” Cisneros wrote about Esperanza getting sexually assaulted, “Sally, you lied. It wasn’t what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn’t want it, Sally, (99)” she has Esperanza tell the story of her own sexual assault. Cisneros uses Esperanza to spread messages about certain issues that she believes strongly in such as Feminism. “She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away, (89)” Cisneros talks about empowerment and how women should not be afraid to be strong an independent. The message is women can have a claim on themselves and they don’t owe anyone anything. Cisneros uses this coming of age story to define herself through Esperanza. Cisneros tells the story of the community alongside Esperanza’s story. By telling the story of the community as well, Cisneros shows this community that seems content. However, there are many messages that come with telling the story of the community
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
Sandra Cisneros demonstrates a challenge that is not obviously to overcome for a young child, in other words one can say that it is remarkable to undertake such responsibility by awaking the older women about their sufferings for an improvement and by keeping watch over her sister constitutes the most important task for her and this act demonstrates she does not neglect her family even she care about her neighbors welfare but. This double responsibility are important aspects for allowing to provide relevant evidences that depict the early responsibility throughout the protagonist Esperanza
She was born in Chicago, Illinois. Cisneros grew up in a Latino family around the 1950s and 1960s. She had a Mexican father and Chicano mother. Cisneros was encouraged by her mother to read and was not insisted with spending all of her time performing classic “women’s work”. Cisneros welcomes her culture with open arms, but acknowledges the unjustness between the genders within. Having experience growing up in a poor neighborhood in a working class family while facing the difficulties created by racism, sexism, and her status, Esperanza longed to leave the barrio. Later, she finds her capability to succeed individually and find a “home with herself”; she worked to recreate some Chicano stereotypes for her community. Cisneros didn’t want to
To begin, Cisneros uses metaphors of classism to express Espernaza’s views of classism and how it causes those of a lower class to be devalued. Throughout the novel, Esperanza dreams of moving into a new house, a house on the hill because “people who live on hills sleep so close to the stars that they forget about [those] who live on earth” (86). The house on the hill is a metaphor for those who are higher up in the social class. Those who live on the hills live their live their entire lives so easily and “[do not] look down at all except to be content to live on the hills” (86). Esperanza critiques that the higher class are happy with their own lives and ignorant to their privilege, therefore, they do not care about the less fortunate. This metaphor of
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
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
The Novel, The House on Mango Street, was based on the writer Sandra Cisneros. She was writing this when she was living in Chicago. She was like Esperanza. She want though poverty. She has been heartbroken and deeply joyous. She inventing for herself who and what she will become. This is the life of Esperanza Cordero and based on Sandra Cisneros to all women out there.
A poignant figure in Esperanza’s life is her own grandmother. In fact, Esperanza was given her birth name after her grandmother. A touching gesture that came from good faith. A name may have some value, but for Esperanza there was a high intrinsic quality to such a simple component. Despite, never encountering her own grandmother in person, Esperanza was grateful to have fond memories by carrying her legacy through her name. Life’s motto concerns dealing with adversity and carrying the legacy of one’s family eternally. Being confident and smart was the only way to live by. No man was needed to help raise and nurture herself. Her grandmother instilled in Esperanza a sense of fortitude and independence. It is sad that a regret of Esperanza is linked to her grandmother, further illustrating the physical and mental hardships one can endure in
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.
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.
Thoughts and feelings are human characteristics which distinct us from one another and cannot be duplicated or falsified. Cisneros bestows the feature of an internal view on Esperanza by having her speak of her thoughts and feelings in first person narrative throughout the novel. Cisneros starts acquainting this feature early in the story for such topics as laughter: “Nenny and I don’t look like sisters…not right away. Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have the same fat popsicle lips like everybody else in their family. But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would
The family’s new home is located in the center of a crowded Latino neighborhood in Chicago, also very similar to the up-bringing of Cisneros. Chicago is important to the setting of the story and to understanding the underlining meanings, because Chicago is a city where many of the poor areas are racially segregated. As soon as she arriving to her new home Esperanza promises herself that she will someday leave Mango Street and have a house all her own, a house which resembles the American dream, white fence, and huge yard. During the year covered in the novel Esperanza matures significantly, both in a sexual and emotional manner. The novel as it is broken into chapters, short stories, almost charts and illustrates her life as she makes friends, develops her first crush, and endures sexual assault. The charting of Esperanza life is mainly done through the stories of many of Esperanza’s neighbors. The stories giving a full picture of the neighborhood and the life which Esperanza is living on a day to day basis. It’s interesting because many of the stories, specially of the women in Esperanza’s neighborhood, allows the reader to assume that the lives of these women, which include abuse, male dominance, and lack of freedom are all possible outcomes and paths of Esperanza’s future. After moving to the house, Esperanza quickly becomes friends with Lucy and Rachel, two girls whom are also Mexican-American and who live only across the street from her. Lucy, Rachel, Esperanza,
“The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros is a unique piece of literature that brings an interesting style of writing to life. Cisneros writes in vignettes that are as powerful as they are short and to the point. These snapshot stories illustrate the life of a young adolescent girl named Esperanza, who is trying to understand the ways of life, and fit in her culture. She learns that some of her expectations don’t quite match with the reality of her world and every action has a consequence. This is a prevalent topic throughout the book as Esperanza is growing up and facing life’s challenges as a female teenager in 1984.
She also showed her emotions towards her house and it was clear she did not want it and was trying to escape from it.“The House on Mango Street “is about a hispanic girl who is 12 years old in the beginning of the story. The book itself is a collection of vignettes and short stories but it helps the narrative be more descriptive and expand our knowledge on Esperanza’s
Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street is a novel that seeks to bring awareness of Mexican-American culture and how it affects women in particular. Accordingly, its protagonist Esperanza is used to portray what it is like to be a Mexican-American female in this world. She learns what is expected of her and what is out of her reach during her growth throughout the novel, in which she develops an independent and caring identity. The process of this development is influenced by her culture and socioeconomic status.