House on Mango Street

In “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros Esperanza stated: “I’m going to Hell, and I probably deserve it.” As Esperanza said this, it sounded very awful of her to say that about himself. In this theme Sentence in Chapter 23 “Born Bad” you could tell already that it was one of the days when Esperanza’s life was troubled.

“My mother says I was born on a bad date and she will pray for me” is another instance of how difficult life is for Esperanza. “Because of what we did to Aunt Lope” (Rachel, Lucy) “The day we played the game, we didn’t really know she was going to pass away. “We pretended, with heads thrown back, arms down helplessly, and dangling as if we were dead.” Esperanza knew her aunt Guadalupe was ill because she said: “I knew she had a disease that would not go away.” These are just a couple of examples of how challenging Esperanza’s life is because she has to live with the wrong she did to her aunt as she was dying hopelessly.

However, Esperanza has experienced “moments of happiness” Esperanza said: “Hooray! Today we are Cinderella because our shoes fit the same” This quote showcases a tiny amount of the happiness that Esteranza demonstrated as she said “Hooray”. You can imagine her excitement in her voice. This chapter is mostly about how Esperanza got the comfortable down boots that she loved for a few minutes.

Esperanza’s dream world is an accumulation of hopes and dreams of independence due to a childhood plagued with poverty and family frustrations. In The House on Mango Street Esperanza dreams of having a place all her own one whose simply dcor would reflect her as a person. She is not struggling against her economic depression but rather her lack of independence. Esperanzas need for a home is very much related to her economic situation, her dreams for and frustrations towards her family, and her need to have a place of her own free from the constraints she finds both inside and outside her present habitation.

When describing her house, Esperanzas thoughts reflect her disturbed and turbulent emotions that she is experiencing. A description of her new house helps the reader understand the narrators shame and understand the severity of her disappointment. Its small and red with tight steps in front and the windows so small youd think they were holding their breath.

Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. Her personification of the house reveals how crucial the issue of a home is to the narrator. It as if the house has an agency of its own and is blocking Esperanzas path to happiness in a place of her own. Another reference to her dissatisfaction with her living conditions lies in the conversation between the nun and Esperanza. Where do you live? She asked. There, I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there? I live there. I nodded. The short of question and answer adds a tone of tension to the dialogue. The repetition of the word live alludes to the overall theme of home, and the nun provides an unintentional verbal beating to her.

Esperanza allows the reader to see the poverty that runs though Mango Street through her sharp perception through detail and dialogue. Esperanzas ideal house is not one of great beauty or elegance, but one of her own. She would relish the solitude and independence. At the ladder part of the story, Esperanza again gives the summary of the familys different addresses, but she stops at Mango Street because she remembers the sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to the most. The painful emotions that Mango Street evokes in Esperanza are relieved when she finally expresses her love-hate relationship with the place upon paper. She says that some day she will say goodbye to Mango street, so that one day she can come back for those like so many of the characters er have met- who can not make it out on their own.

Another major conflict between Esperanza and her dream world and the realities of Mango street, lie in Monkey Garden. When the family who owned both monkey and the garden moved, she relished not having to hear the animal and to explore the garden that the monkey had once guarded. At first, the garden was a wonder of botanical beauty, and then in time becomes an overgrown graveyard for cars. The garden ceases to be the sight of childhood pleasure for Esperanza when Sally enters the garden to kiss a group of boys. Filled with unexplainable anger, she becomes both a snitch and a warrior armed with sticks and a brick in order to save Sally. When she is forced away, she painfully comes to terms with the fact that she no longer exists as a carefree girl. The joy Esperanza feels while observing the life in the garden is evident in her light hearted diction, such as dizzy bees, bow-tied fruit flies turning somersaults and humming in the air. 

The garden itself is a manifestation of themes of self-definition and determination that is exemplified by the childrens ability to hide from their parents and invent their own play spaces there. Her paradise in the garden becomes humiliation and disappointment for her, it is the place where she is forced to let go of childhood. Esperanza feels that she is a stranger to herself and keenly feels her lack of self-identity in a welcoming place. Her feelings of isolation are emphasized by the fact that a personified tree is her only source of comfort, as it is the sole being that wouldnt mind if I lay down and cried a long time. Esperanza is forced to confront the reality that is her life by waking up from her dream world.

Esperanza and Nenny are two characters who play an important role in a book

called “House on Mango Street.” Esperanza and Nenny both share the same difference and similarities. Esperanza is a non fit in the world character. Esperanza is Mexican girl who is desperate to find a friend that is exactly like her and to change her name. Nenny is Esperanza’s little sister.

Nenny is a joyful and a tag along character. It is Esperanza’s responsibility to take care of Nenny. Nenny always hangs around with Esperanza which sometimes annoys and irritates Esperanza. The similarities between them two are that they both laugh at the same thing even though they don’t understand it. They both don’t like their Spanish name and want an English name. The differences are that they both

Esperanza and Nenny don’t look alike but inside their heart they both have the same feelings. There are tons of differences and similarities between them. The differences are that one is younger and the other one is older, they both look different, they both have different hairs, and they both have different opinions on each other. The similarities are that they both laugh at the same thing even though they don’t understand what it is.

They both hate their Spanish name and want an English name. They both think the same inside their heart. For example, Esperanza says that a house looks like the one in Mexico. “Before Rachel and Lucy laugh at her Nenny says: Yes, that’s Mexico all right.” This shows that they both think the same thing inside their heart.

Esperanza and Nenny play an important role in the “House on Mango Street.”

There are endless of reasons when you compare them both. So, once again Esperanza and Nenny are different and similar in their own ways.

In the novel The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros reveals how violence affects women on Mango Street. The women in Mango Street have abusive husbands and fathers. They don’t do anything about it because they seem to be used to being abused. Esperanza tries to deal with the violence in her neighborhood by trying to protect her friend Sally from some boys but it turns out being a failure for her. Esperanza finds it important to try and protect her friend Sally from kissing some boys.

She goes to tell the boy’s mother what happen and the mother said was “That’s all? What do you want me to do she said, call the cops? ” (97) The mother of the boy clearly didn’t care about what was happening, she probably thought they were just playing a game. Esperanza seemed disappointed and angry because all she wanted was for her friend to be back with her. Not the boys who made her kiss them or who knows what else they might have made her do to get her keys back. Sally didn’t really seem to be bothered from what Esperanza told.

She just wanted to protect her friend, but she clearly couldn’t do anything about it. The chapter “Red Clowns” depicts how Esperanza had to deal with sexual violence by some boys who touched her at the carnival. Esperanza didn’t realize what had happened to her because she didn’t know anything about sex. She expected sex to be like in the movies she watched, so she believed everyone had lied to her about it. Girls like Esperanza see things about sex in media and believe it has to be like in the movies, shows, and in novellas. In fact, teens report that their main source of information about sex, dating and sexual health comes from what they see and hear in the media. ” (Sexual Behavior. What Teens Learn From Media). It basically says that media is a high influence on the way kids see sex. This is clearly what happened to Esperanza since she said it wasn’t what she saw in the movies. It was a big let down for her even though she didn’t want to be touched by the boys. “Linoleum Roses” is another chapter that depicts how Esperanza’s friend married an older man who brings violence to her life.

Sally married an older man to get away from the violence she got at home from her father, who would beat her so she wouldn’t bring shame to his family. Sally ended up getting married with an older man who now beats her. Sally’s husband doesn’t allow her to go out or to communicate with her friends because he believes she belongs to him and finds the need to control her to keep her with him. “He also won’t appreciate the younger women being close to family and friends. ” (Advice Women Need When Dating Older Men).

This is what is happening to Sally she just doesn’t really mind because to her he is only violent once in awhile not all the time. She needs help and Esperanza notices that but she can’t really do anything about it but continue being her friend. Violence is a big part in the life of Esperanza’s best friend who she thought she had to protect because she truly cared for her. Esperanza just wanted her friend Sally back for them to be young and reckless. In the end Esperanza got past the violence in her neighborhood and what had happened to her because she wanted to live in her dream home alone.

Function/S of Space in Sandra Cisneros’ the House on Mango Street

Function/s of Space in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street Space occupies a central role in Sandra Cisneros’ coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street. Using the example of the house shows this very plainly. This can be seen at the very beginning of the book, namely the title. Although it is a female Bildungsroman, the novel is not named after its protagonist Esperanza Cordero, but her residence. It shows that Cisneros attached much importance to the house on Mango Street and the reader also learns that it is of central significance for the development of the young girl.

On Mango Street, she develops not only physically, but also in terms of her character and her own identity. That is why I will concentrate on the function of the house rather than on other different settings in the novel. Usually, the house is a symbol for warmth and shelter. It represents the place of the family and where one belongs to. But the first sentence of the initial vignette shows, that this does not apply to the house on Mango Street. Esperanza’s family has been constantly on the move and they lived in several apartments in different cities.

The feeling of being rooted therefore never existed, just as little as the feeling of comfort. For Esperanza, the house on Mango Street does not symbolize shelter, but shame. In the first vignette Esperanza depicts the family’s house in a very negative way, run down and with cramped confines. It is neither “[…] the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket […]”, nor “[…] the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed. ” (Cisneros 4). The house on Mango Street is at last their own, but not the one Esperanza and her family have longed for.

It symbolizes “[t]he conflict between the promised land and the harsh reality” (Valdes “Canadian Review” 57). Especially for Esperanza, who is in quest of her own identity, reality and hope (Spanish: esperanza) diverge here, which means that Esperanza has not found her personal reality yet. She wishes to have “[a] real house. One I could point to. ” (Cisneros 5). This desire shows that the house also symbolizes the “American Dream” of having a comfortable home of one’s own, something the people of Esperanza’s community will probably never attain.

Esperanza experiences that instead, they are often confronted with the fact that the house also functions as a symbol of female restriction. This proves the given traditional role of a Chicana, whose business concentrates on the household and on being wife and mother. In the novel, female restriction is also depicted in a more extreme way: Several women like Marin and Rafaela are restricted physically because they are locked indoors by their husbands. Esperanza clearly comes out against such a male-dominated home.

Although she is not sure who she is and still searches for her own identity, she clearly knows what she wants: a house all on her own, “Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own. ” (Cisneros 108). According to that, having her own house stands for her longing for a self-determined space as an independent woman, in which she can be free to be herself, unconfined by either a husband or a father and without any social expectations. There is something, Esperanza didn’t realize yet: the fact “[…] that the house she seeks is, in reality, her person. (Valdes “Canadian Review” 58). Thus, the house functions as a metaphor for Esperanza’s identity formation. Apart from its importance for self-identification, the image of the house functions as a synecdoche: it is part of the community, a place of one’s own amidst the whole community and barrio. By interacting with the community, meaning communication and observation, Esperanza learns that she can only define herself through her relationship to the other people of her community.

She orientates herself by some positive role models like Aunt Lupe or Minerva, but she also distances herself from Sally or the “women sitting by the window” like her great-grandmother or Mamacita. Nevertheless, Esperanza learns through their experience. This shows Esperanza’s ability to distinguish between the different role models. She recognizes that she does not want to be a copy of somebody and this is why she sees others just as partial role models. The social interaction with the community actually is of utter importance for Esperanza’s identity formation.

The fact that she defines herself through people she lives with shows the close interaction between community and Individual. The house stands for the community because it is part of it and thus functions as a synecdoche: pars pro toto – the term “community” is replaced by a narrower one, thus the “house”. This also works vice versa, totum pro parte means here that the house is used to represent the community. For Esperanza, the relationship between individual and community is a mutual one. She recognizes that there is a lot she learned and experienced while living in the house on Mango Street and in the ommunity. At the end of the novel, both what the three sisters and Alicia say to her “[…] induce Esperanza to acknowledge her indebtedness to the community and her role as mediator and negotiator between worlds. ” (Rukwied 63). So she decides to give something back, to help others with her experience. In the vignette “Bums in the Attic” she states: One day I’ll own my own house, but I won’t forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I’ll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house. Cisneros 87) Esperanza shows great sympathy for other people who are, by some means or other, lost like she was when wondering who she is. She describes this state with the word “homeless” (Cisneros 87). Having no home means having no house or apartment. And as I argued before, the house is the central metaphor for self-identification. In the end, Esperanza finally finds her voice by beginning with writing. She now has a clear vision of how her promised house should be: “Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem. (Cisneros 108). This is another way of contributing something to the community: she writes about it. As I argued, the house is of central importance in The House on Mango Street. Esperenza first refuses to accept that she belongs to Mango Street and thus to the whole community. But in the end she recognizes that it was there her identity fully developed because our environment always shapes our identity. I focused on the function of the house, but there are further reasons for the importance of space in general.

In my opinion, one of them is “highly visible” indeed: The fact that Sandra Cisneros left a lot of space on the pages of the novel. In chapter 7 for example, there is both recto and verso in a large part unprinted. Works Cited List: Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. McCracken, Ellen. “The House on Mango Street: Community-oriented Introspection and the Demystification of Patriarchal Violence. ” In: Horno-Delgado, Asuncion et al (eds). Breaking Boundaries: Latina Writing and Critical Readings. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. 7-71. Rukwied, Annette L. The search for identity in two Chicana novels : Sandra Cisneros’ The house on Mango Street & Ana Castillo’s the mixquiahuala letters. Stuttgart: Universitat, Magisterarbeit, 1998. Valdes, Maria Elena de: “In Search of Identity in Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street”, Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 1992. 55-69. Valdes, Maria Elena de. “The Critical Reception of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. ” Gender, Self, and Society. Ed. Renate von Bardeleben. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993. 287-300. (7. 01. 2008) (7. 01. 2008)

House on Mango Street: Four Skinny Trees

The Trees of Hope and Courage In The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros takes you into a completely different world through the eyes of a young, insecure Esperanza growing up in a poor section of Chicago. A vignette that especially stood out was “Four Skinny Trees”. In this vignette Esperanza is describing four skinny trees that are overlooked and underappreciated. Cisneros uses powerful personification techniques that not only create vivid images but trigger intense reactions. Her words trigger despair and hope, fear and courage, strength and weakness.

Esperanza is connected to these trees on an emotional level because what she is imagining in these trees is what she sees in herself. The trees served as emotional guides teaching Esperanza to have confidence. Cisneros projects Esperanza’s emotions onto these four skinny trees though powerful personification techniques. Esperanza sees a distinct parallel between her life and the trees. Esperanza feels as if, “They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them” (74).

Esperanza sees herself in these trees, “…with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine” (74). She sees these scrawny trees trapped in the concrete of Mango Street and can relate because she too is stuck in the concrete of Mango Street. Esperanza sees a parallel between her and the trees and imagines these trees with souls and emotions that reflect her own. She perceives the trees as full of anger, “They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quite their anger” (74).

It is apparent that these trees aren’t really angry but that Esperanza is embedding her hidden rage into these trees. Cisneros vivid personification makes the trees strong symbols of Esperanza’s emotions, her anger, fear, inconsequence and also her hope, courage and importance. These trees are misplaced and misunderstood but yet they keep on growing, keep on fighting. They continue to exist, not giving up, “Four who grew despite concrete” (75). The four scrawny, angry trees symbolize both hope and courage.

To Esperanza these trees symbolize an emotional guide, they teach her she can trade despair for hope and fear for courage. The trees are teachers. The trees could very well surrender, “… they’d all droop like tulips in a glass, each with arms around the other” (75). But they don’t they keep on growing despite that they do not belong. Esperanza takes courage from the trees to never give up. Esperanza has learned from these trees how to achieve a peace with who she is.

These four skinny trees that were probably planted by some city worker on a concrete slab are objects in which Esperanza has brought to life with her own emotions. Because they too are misplaced like Esperanza but yet they continue to be and keep growing, they do not give up. They have taught her not to surrender to who she is but to accept it and keep growing. One day Esperanza will leave Mango Street but instead of living with despair waiting to escape she is living with hope for the future and the courage to be strong throughout the process.