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Theme Of Isolation In The House On Mango Street

Decent Essays
A boy feels trapped and isolated in his house. He wants to go outside with his friends and explore the landscape, but he can't. His mom isolates him inside making him study and do extra work for school. He wants to leave, breathe in the fresh air, but he can't escape his mother’s grasp. This scenario represents a similar idea addressed in the vignette “The House on Mango Street”: Isolation. In The House On Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros is able to incorporate details and characterization to illustrate Esperanza’s isolation due to her moving constantly. Ultimately, the way Cisneros develops the use of symbolism, the theme of identity and literary devices in the vignette leads one to see why it is the most powerful chapter in the novel. To begin with, the vignette “The House On Mango Street” illustrates how moving from apartments to dilapidated houses can cause a feeling of isolation. Primarily, when others walk by it creates a barrier. For example, Esperanza conveys humiliation “You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing” (Cisneros 5). Thus, Esperanza is sent to a place of embarrassment and humiliation. In addition, the vignette “The House On Mango Street” illustrated as a way where Esperanza can't get a grasp on a normal life due to her moving constantly. For instance, the streets and cities Esperanza lives in represent a blockade, “Before that we lived in Loomis… before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeper it was Paulina, and before that I can't
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