What a Home Really is in The House on Mango Street Essays

Hook: In the coming-of-age novel, House on Mango Street, the main character Esperanza narrates the story through her perspective of the situations she encounters as she grows older in her new neighborhood.

As a young girl, Esperanza is a young girl who looks at life from experience of living in poverty, where many do not question their experience. She is a shy, but very bright girl. She dreams of the perfect home, with beautiful flowers and a room for everyone. When she moves to the house of Mango Street, reality is so different than the dream. In this story, hope (Esperanza) sustains tragedy. The house she dreamed of was another on. It was one of her own. One where she did not have to share a bedroom with everyone. That included her mother, father and two siblings. The run down tiny house has "bricks crumbling in places". The one she dreamed of had a great big yard, trees and 'grass growing without a fence'. She did not want to abandon

Esperanza is new to the neighborhood, and was never proud of her previous houses, but the negative intonation that the nun uses on her makes her feel like she is being judged, not on who she is, but what her family can afford. There is the place Esperanza now has to call home and the degrading presumption that the neighborhood already has causes her to accept that she can’t change her image without money and let her personality shine through. She seems to accept her label as poor in the story, “A Rice Sandwich”, where she believes the special, also known as rich, kids get to eat in the canteen and she wants to be part of that narrative, so she begs her mother for three days, to write her a note to allow her eat in the canteen. When she couldn’t endure her daughter’s nagging anymore, she complied. Thinking this would be enough affirmation, Esperanza went to school the next with the note and stood in the line with the other kids. She wasn’t recognized by the nun who checks the list, and has to face Sister Superior, who claims that she doesn’t live far enough to stay at school and asks Esperanza to show where her house is. “That one? She said, pointing to a row of ugly three -flats, the ones even the raggedy men are ashamed to go into. Yes, I nodded even though I knew that wasn’t my house,”(45). Esperanza was compared to the most raggedy men, and had to accept

Esperanza is forever marked by the house and neighborhood she lives in. She wants to be like other kids who are allowed to eat their lunch at school instead of having to go home everyday. These students live father from the school than she does. Esperanza assumes these children live in better houses and neighborhoods. She is embarrassed by her house and angry that she must be identified by it. As said by Sister Superior, “I bet I can see your house from my window. Which one? Come here. Which one is your house?” The sister points to an ugly row of houses in the general direction of Esperanzas address.

Esperanza’s insecurity about where she lives and how she lives is the conflict of the story. A tradition her father, Nenny, and herself has is going to the houses on the hills, she believes she looks like the hungry asking for food so she no longer goes. Esperanza is so ashamed of her house that when someone ask which house she lives in she denies living in those flats. She becomes aware of how poor her family is when she must go to work to help pay for private school, this encourages her to get out of the flats. Esperanza sets out to be able to support herself on her own and buy the house she has been dreaming of since she was little.

In life, we are often deeply influenced by the people who surround us. Consider the age-old adage “Birds of a Feather Flock Together”; this familiar saying reminds us that, in life, we gravitate toward people who appeal to us, and those people can have a great impact on who we are and the choices we make. In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, Esperanza meets many women who play a role in her life. Some of the women impact her in negative ways, but others help her to see that she can make more of her life than what her Chicago neighborhood offers. Of all the women in Esperanza’s life, Esperanza is most influenced by her mother and Alicia because they teach her to rely on herself in order to escape Mango Street.

When a character is exposed to an incident in which his or her perspective is forever changed, he or she will gain knowledge and maturity. An event such as being raped is an example of how one can lose his or her innocence. The House on Mango Street leads the reader into analyzing his or her own life. It shows how Esperanza’s pure view of life has changed to become a more sophisticated and realistic one. Growing up is something that everyone, at one point or another, goes through. This loss of innocence is something that is unavoidable and irreversible. When people lose their innocence, they gain maturity and gain knowledge. When a person losing the pureness in them, they open their eyes and they are able to see the world for what it really

I never had a choice. They decided it all for me and the next thing you know, we

Women’s Escape into Misery Women’s need for male support and their husband’s constant degradation of them was a recurring theme in the book House on Mango Street. Many of Esperanza’s stories were about women’s dreams of marrying, the perfect husband and having the perfect family and home. Sally, Rafaela, and Minerva are women who gave me the impression of [damsel’s in distress].CLICHÉ, it’s ok though. It’s relevant They wished for a man to sweep them of their feet and rescue them from their present misery. These characters are inspiring and strong but they are unable to escape the repression of the surrounding environment. *Cisneros presents a rigid world in which they lived in, and left them no other hope but to get married.

The story; themes; and implications for teaching from the House on Mango Street come from showing how today’s society has low expectations for those in the inner city. This book can be used to show what inner life is like and how these people are looked at and treated by others in society. Using this book in the classroom can be beneficial because many people have negative preconceptions of what life is really like as a minority. I know that I think of inner city schools and the students that attend them as underprivileged and don’t hold them to the same standards as I do others from smaller more suburban towns. Going to Milwaukee this semester has been a culture shock and I think that reading this book

The world is not always fair, but don’t let that hold you down. Make the best of the cards you are dealt. In the Sandra Cisneros novel, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza, the main character, struggles to find happiness on Mango Street. In her youth, Esperanza moved from place to place quite frequently. Before she lived on Mango Street, she lived on Loomis, Keeler, Paulina, and in several other homes on several other streets. The story is about Esperanza’s experience on Mango Street and her self-discovery. She tries to figure out who she is in the light of the stereotypes of the Latina women she is surrounded by. Growing up in the barrio, Esperanza learns that Latina women are treated poorly by men and marry at an extremely young age.

The beginning of this book introduces Ezperanza along with a collection of other characters who influence Ezperanza She exlores cultural backrounds and how they are affected by society through different experiences.. We learn that Ezperanza is ashamed of her poverty, where in many instances Ezperanza tries to hide her poor life style. Many representations of this are present throughout the stroy. For example, Ezperanza attempts to hide her unattractive shoes at a party in order to avoid others to believe that she cannot afford better quality shoes.

Many gender roles and themes are observed, throughout the course of this story, in particular, the single mother role. Women are also contrasted with the men as their lives are constrained inside of the home while the men are permitted to enjoy life outside. Divisions in gender are revealed from the very beginning of the book. For example, in “Boys & Girls,” Esperanza communicates the contrast between herself and her brothers, Kiki and Carlos as she states, “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours. My brothers for example. They’ve got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside they can’t be seen talking to girls” (Cisneros 8). Esperanza can only interact with her sister, Nenny, but Nenny is "too young to be [her] friend" (Cisneros 8). Esperanza is lonely and dreams of a true friend. She feels that she is like "a red balloon, a balloon that is tied to an anchor" (Cisneros 9). Esperanza is apprehensive that she will be trapped on Mango Street, like all the other women. This particular situation demonstrates the first indication of gender issues in her community.

Growing-up in a predominately Mexican/Mexican-American community as a first-generation girl, like I did, is no walk in the park. Not only was I to uphold my parent’s traditional Mexican values such as: learning to cook and keep to a household, as well as a marriage, but also to uphold my new American values of independence and success measured in money as well as in property. At school I was taught to forget my first language, Spanish, and speak only in English, reminding me that: “You don’t want to speak with an accent.” At home I was reminded that Spanish, was and still is my first language and to leave English for school use only, reminding me that: “We can’t understand you in English.” Through this tug-of-war, between both cultures expectations of who I was to be/become, there was a desperate need to find my own identity, away from either culture. Sandra Cisneros’, The House on Mango Street, documents the need and struggle to find one’s own identity, through the narrator Esperanza’s experiences growing-up in a predominately Latino community in Chicago. Throughout the book Esperanza tries to understand the many different factors that influence her life and identity: in particular ethnicity and gender. Although, Esperanza suggest that she doesn’t want to be identified by either her Mexican identity or her sex; both of these factors play a major role in her struggle to find her own identity, by the way that they are intertwined in her own thoughts and in the descriptions of

She says she's not a part of mango street. She wants to leave mango and never return. Esperanza has a negative view of herself, but in the end she accepts that she is part of Mangos street. A nun went to Esperanza and made her feel about where she lives. She says the nun made her feel like nothing. Esperanza has a low self esteem because she is not confident in her surrounding. She states ¨Temporary, says papa, but i know how those things go.