The Mother Of The Children

Esperanza is dealing with many obstacles throughout her life but she keeps moving forward and getting past them. While at a carnival, Sally leaves Esperanza alone near some red clowns to leave with a boy. The clowns rape her and “He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine” (Cisneros 100). Sally leaves her there without thinking she will be raped but she never comes back to get her. Esperanza doesn’t leave because she trusts that Sally will come back for her. Esperanza has to get past the incident and her way is by looking at the trees

She even says she wants “to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like two black snails.” Like as if she wants to not be her at that moment. The feeling of being isolated because she was the only one who was genuinely angry at the boys who made Sally do indecent things in order to get her keys back. Esperanza stated in the quote that she wanted to be dead. It’s clear that she was in the state of not wanting to live, or thinking that this isolation of not knowing and in the state of confusion is not worth living at all. Another example of Esperanza thinking that life isn’t worth living is when she thinks to herself and personifies the four skinny trees outside her bedroom window. She thinks in her bedroom that the trees are like her. “They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands

Esperanza’s friend Sally is one of the reasons that Esperanza really questions what it is to grow up. Sally wears make-up and appears to challenge the men in her life until they retaliate, like her father who beats and rapes her. In the chapter “The Monkey Garden” Sally is flirting with a group of boys and Esperanza can not understand why Sally will not play with her and the other girls. Then Esperanza thinks that Sally needs recusing from Tito and the other boys when they demand a kiss for the keys they took from her. Sally tells Esperanza to go away and she finally understands that Sally wanted to be with the boys. After meeting Sally and becoming more aware of her own sexuality Esperanza “decided to not grow up tame.”(88). She knows that

All the people on Mango Street were struggling to get by, but they seemed satisfied with just making it. Esperanza was not. There were characters like Esperanza’s mother who was a “smart cookie,” and could’ve been anything, but she let shame get the best of her and dropped out of school. There was also Rafaela who got married before the 8th grade just so she could move into her own house, but her husband never let her leave the house afterward. He never let her see her friends, and the highlight of her week was getting coconut or papaya juice from someone who would send it up in a paper bag attached to a clothespin since she couldn’t leave the house. Lastly, there was the time when she was left stranded by the tilt-a- whirl waiting for a friend that never came back and got molested by a group of boys. The only witnesses were the red clown statues that seemed to be laughing at her. Nevertheless, she let none of this stopped her from going forward and perusing her dream. She still seemed to be struggling with a sense of belonging, but maybe that’s because she didn’t.

Esperanza does not want to be like the other women in her town, always locked inside and the only freedom they have is a small window. Her great-grandmother was a role model, she showed Esperanza the way she did not want to

Esperanza is faced with several major events that forces her to mature at a young age. In these events readers can see how she grows as her emotions change. In the beginning of the book, Esperanza’s father passes away (p. 22) and their family home on the ranch, El Rancho de las Rosas, catches on fire (p.40). This is the beginning of Esperanza's quickly changed young life. As a young girl she realizes life will never be the same. She once was wealthy and lived life with the help of housekeepers. Papa also had field workers to help with his needs on the farm. Raised with a positive perspective on life, her hopes and dreams are soon challenged. Esperanza is forced to leave everything she has ever known to move to the United States. The fire is symbolic because the family is forced start all over, in life, along with her social

The first time Esperanza makes an appearance in the book, she is younger and easily manipulated, especially by her friends. Esperanza meets a girl named Cathy, a snobby girl that lived on Mango Street. When Cathy tells Esperanza “Okay, I’ll be your friend. But only until next Tuesday. That’s when we move away.” Then as if she forgot I had just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad” (13) This was a racist statement towards Esperanza and her family, something she doesn’t quite understand yet because Esperanza thinks Cathy forgot they moved in, yet she was actually being racist. This is the first time Esperanza is exposed to racism in the book, therefore exposing her to the outside world. Later in the book, Esperanza meets Sally, a beautiful girl with shiny black hair, that all she seemingly just wants is to love, and Esperanza wants to be just like her. “I like your black coat and the shoes you wear, where did you get them? I want to buy shoes just like yours.” (82) Sally and Esperanza become friends, but later in the story, in the chapter Red Clowns, Esperanza is put in a dangerous situation where Sally walks off

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.

In “Red Clowns”, she idealizes Sally, a girl her in her neighborhood her age who she befriended, because she was more sexually mature than her and she was affiliated (flirted, danced, etc) with boys. In the novella, Esperanza goes with Sally to the fair and Sally abandons here for a boy. Esperanza, alone with no help or protection, was sexually assaulted by a group of boys that remained after Sally and the boy left. Esperanza expresses her frustration with Sally and blames her sexual assault on Sally “... you lied, you lied. He wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, I love you, I love you Spanish girl” (Red Clowns). She learns that sex and love do not go hand-in-hand, which is what pop culture advertises, and realizes that media will never change, so women like Sally and others who have more experience with men should debunk the myth. She knows that women have to help each other in the world they live in. This causes her to never completely leave Mango Street; she doesn’t want to abandon women who are in a dangerous place that Sally left her in (metaphorically and physically). “The Family of Little Feet” focuses on Esperanza’s journey in puberty. Esperanza, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel receive used high heels, a staple of

Esperanza showing hatred toward Sally indirectly shows how Esperanza has matured. All in all, Esperanza Cordero’s lack of innocence and gaining of knowledge develops her into a more mature character.

Her ideology and actions were outside the box. Not many people around her approved of her lifestyle and she was fine with that. She had to live different than the stereotypical women of her time in order to achieve what she wanted in life. On the other hand, Esperanza rebelled against the assigned gender roles. She does not act feminist at all and she does not want to get married. For Esperanza, resisting these gender roles is a way of standing up for herself. At the end, even though, these two might not get exactly what they wanted, at least, they tried. beneatha still gets to become a doctor, help people and help change the world. Esperanza might not get what she wanted, at first, to leave Mango Street, but she discovers her true self. Both of these characters discover their true identity as females. Both Esperanza and Beneatha battle against the ascribed gender roles to achieve their goals and live their

She wanted to get away from Mango Street, yet they tell her that she can't get leave. She will, but Esperanza will find a way back there to help the people who are stuck there. Some of these people who have to live there life in Mango Street for the rest of themselves, so Esperanza will help them out.

Esperanza becomes angry at the fact that the women and girls in her neighborhood don’t stand up for each other, they just let the men and boys do what they’d like. The women are imprisoned inside, abused, and Esperanza knows it is wrong. She wants to save Sally because nobody else can, and nobody else wants

Sally’s relationship with boys demostratess that she is grows up too fast. Sally and Esperanza went to monkey garden but tito and his friends finessed Sally’s keys and said they wont give it back unless Sally kisses them. It states ¨ one Of tito close friends said you can't get the keys back unless you kissed us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but said yes. It was that simple. ”(pg 96). this proves she is growing up too fast. This will cause problems in the future because people won't take Sally seriously because of the way she acts. In addition to kissing boys, she got married. In the vingette, lineolium roses, Sally met a man in claim that she fell in love with him and got married to him. It says “ Sally got married like I new she would, young and not ready but

The article, “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes is about mothers in the Alto do Cruzeiro and how the mothers take the death of an infant. The mothers have been thought not to morn for their babies and to not become attached. They do this because the high rate of mortality because the infants are left at home while the mother is at work. No one is there to tend for the babies and the mother cannot take the babies to work with them. No funerals are done with the death of these babies some of the babies never even got a name because the mothers are thought not to get attached to the child until they know the child will survive. This is all due to the malnourishment in the children because the mothers are in poverty