Esperanza gets a job Peter Pan Photo Finisher, partly because she wanted to, and partly because her father forced her to. “It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to work. I did.” (53). This is another opportunity for Esperanza to enter the adult world. But immediately she feels intimidated because she doesn’t understand the rules of the workplace, and is too afraid to ask.
Another prominent part of Esperanza's personality is the trust she has in others. This is one of Esperanza's weaknesses as an individual because it allows her to be gullible and vulnerable. In 'Cathy Queen of Cats' Esperanza's gullibility is obvious when Cathy tells Esperanza that "...[her] father will have to fly to France one day and find her...cousin...and inherit the family house. How do I know this is so? She told me so.".
Also, since Esperanza feel as though she is grown up, she starts making decision on her own, and she starts having these urges/feelings. Like what it would be like to have a boyfriend and etc. So one day Esperanza goes to a carnival with Sally and while there they run into some boys.Sally left with one boy and left esperanza with the rest. And while sally was gone. The rest of the boys forcefully kissed and raped esperanza.And when she saw sally again she broke down and said “ Sally, you lied, it wasn’t what you said at all….”[Cisneros 99].Esperanza was forced into having sex and when she finds sally she loses composure and let’s all her feelings out.
Esperanza is learning from the mistakes that Sally has made in her life. Esperanza fells sad for Sally, she always looked up to her, but now Sally is slowly rotting away. Even though Sally is made mistakes in her childhood Esperanza is taking in the things she should not be doing. She knows about how boys will try and talk to you because of “Hips” or your “Looks” Esperanza has learned from her friends mistakes. She is slowly maturing into a young
She expected it to be big and lavish but it turned out to be smaller and old. She was too quick to assume everything would be better just because her family got more money. Esperanza should’ve been happy she even got a better house. Her former living situation was a horrible and she should have been more appreciative of the major upgrade she got. “You live there?...
By learning from Alicia’s desire to work hard at what she wants help make Esperanza’s personality by helping her to never stop trying to complete what might be hard now but will all make sense at the end and progress even farther. That is why I pick Alicia as a role model that helped shaped her
She also learns that society can pressure people to put a mask on when others are around, and that you can’t truly know the genius of someone by watching the small glimpses of them you see when they around you. Esperanza is a very strongly written character and plays a very good protagonist experiencing life and dealing the harshness of
At one point, when talking about her great grandmother, Esperanza says “She looked out her window her whole life, the way so many women sit with their sadness on an elbow….I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” The “place by the window” symbolizes a lack of freedom or autonomy, and Esperanza does not want that same feeling. However, she doesn’t feel confident
The male-dominated society that Esperanza grows up in forces the idea that women are weak and should stay locked in their houses while men go off to work. The men are immoral and seedy, as expressed in the chapter in which a homeless man leers and asks for a kiss from the little girls. Esperanza experiences the evil of her community when she is sexually assaulted, causing her to lose her previous desire to explore her sexuality. Before being assaulted, she wanted to be “beautiful and cruel” like her friend Sally, because Sally was what she understood to be a perfect woman. However, after her rape she decides that she needs to discover her own identity for herself.
After losing her father, she then loses her home, and everything she has ever loved. She must start over physically when she and Mama leave everything behind and move to the United States. "Do not be afraid to start over." (p. 15) Abuelita, who is Esperanza’s grandmother, says this to her and later, Esperanza utters these wise words herself. They are both speaking about the process of knitting, which serves as a metaphor for overcoming fears and reaching dreams.