Theme Of Metaphors In The House On Mango Street Cisneros

“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and

These are the seven metaphors in The house on Mango Street I found the most effective. “It’s small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath,” page 4. By personifying the house and describing it as holding its breath, it gives you an idea on how cramped it was. “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor,” page 9. Esperanza is lonely because she doesn’t have a best friend and feels like she’s tied down by her siblings. “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth,” page 11. This describes the struggle of having a foreign sounding name in the United States that most people can’t pronounce. “It’s like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones,” page 20. This describes how music can feel bigger than sound and you can

Throughout the book Cisneros employs idiomatic phrases that increases brevity of writing and express various meanings. For example the phrase, ¨But I know how those things go. [5]. Esperanza does not believe that her house on mango street will disappear from her life. Although her parents say it is only ¨ẗemporary¨, in her head she is articulating and considering if her parents really mean what they said. This may have occurred previously multiple times in her life where her parents say that their current house is temporary and a better house will come later. Yet they still have not achieved the house they desire. The author shows the readers that Esperanza is intellectual as she contains the ability to foreshadow future events based on

The House on Mango Street uses three vignettes to state that innocence shelters children from the extreme truth of the adult world. To begin, in “The First Job”, an older man unexpectedly forces himself on Esperanza: “I thought I would because he was so old and just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go” (Cisneros 55). Esperanza’s innocence allowed her to kiss an old man on the cheek for his birthday because she could not imagine anything inappropriate occurring. However, the man “grabs [her] face with both hands” and “doesn’t let go”. This violent action shatters the innocence that has hidden Esperanza from the adult truth. Next, Esperanza witnesses how Tito and the boys treat Sally in “The Monkey Garden”: “One of Tito’s friends said you can’t get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes” (Cisneros 96). The adult game played angers Esperanza as the boys use Sally to their advantage and Sally “[pretends] to be mad” but still willingly complies. Esperanza, unlike Sally, sees the situation as wrong because of her innocence, but when she attempts to save Sally, the boys laugh at her. Embarrassed, Esperanza is exposed to an adult type of game and now feels confused from this break in her innocence. Finally, Esperanza completely loses her innocence after being sexually assaulted at the carnival: “You’re a liar. They all lied. All the books and

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

In life many people set goals for themselves. For some people it maybe a goal such as obtaining a high test grade and for others it maybe to one day own a race car. Everybody has a different outlook on life and everyone has different goals in which they one day hope to achieve. The people who achieve their goals are those who are motivated and determined to do so. When these goals are achieved it is then when you are a hero to yourself.

The most important Theme in The House on Mango Street is identity. Identity is a very

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 The House on Mango Street, the vignette “The Family of Little Feet” first seems like a random story, and is often disregarded, overlooked, and labeled “insignificant” because the story is oriented around three pairs of high-heeled shoes that arealmost immediately thrown away. As a result, seems like an arbitrary story that isn’t connected with the other vignettes. However, after careful reading, the story is relevant to the story since the shoes are a symbol that helps us further understand the characters and develops a theme.

In the vignette “Boys & Girls” Esperanza states “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 8). This is the first key and memorable piece of symbolism in the story. As the red balloon suggests, Esperanza is a vibrant young lady with great potential,

In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a little girl from a Latino heritage is given birth to. Not literally, but in the sense of characterization. Esperanza is a fictional character made up by Cisneros to bring about sensitive, alert, and rich literature. She is the protagonist in the novel and is used to depict a female’s life growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Cisneros creates the illusion that Esperanza is a real human being to communicate the struggles of growing up as a Latina immigrant in a modern world, by giving her a name, elaborating her thoughts and feelings, and illustrating her growth as a person through major events.

Escaping the Real World In the House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the author uses rhymes and figurative language in writing to mentally escape from the real world. On a series of vignettes, the book covers a year in the life of Esperanza. She moves into a house where many of the poor areas are racially segregated and watches many trapped women, literally and figuratively.

“Only a house as clean as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.” [pg. 108] The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros tells of a young woman named Esperanza growing up, and her experiences in doing so. Some experiences are good, some far from it, but throughout the story, Esperanza utilizes writing to take her mind off things for just a little bit. The book comes to show that using beautiful language in the form of poetry gives Esperanza power over her perspective of life.

Sandra Cisneros the author of “The House on Mango Street” through the literary device metaphor. Sandra uses metaphors in her Poem to compare the name she inherited from her great-grandmother. Sandra Cisneros the author of “The House on Mango Street” uses metaphors to compare the name of the girl with different emotions. Sandra Cisneros uses a metaphor in order to show how Esperanza wants to change her name. Esperanza does not like that her name means sadness and nothing good comes from it.

In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza, a young teen narrates the story of her demanding life on Mango street, which varies from feeling forced into watching her younger sister constantly and needing an education, to being sexually assaulted at a carnival. In nearly the same way, Tara Sullivan’s Bitter Side of Sweet, tells the story Amadou, an African teen who is face-to-face with abuse, and lack of education the entire time he’s at the farm, and he’s also given the task of keeping his younger brother safe. Because of the situations they’re forced into, Esperanza and Amadou are constantly watching over their siblings, although neither of them are even close in age to be a parent. In addition to this daunting task, they are