Comparing Bless Me Ultima And The House On Mango Street

Bless Me, Ultima is filled with Antonio's dreams. In these sequences a lot of the boy's fears and perceptions about religion and his family are vividly portrayed. These dream sequences are imaginative and beautifully written. They add a great deal to the novel. They allow the reader of Bless Me, Ultima inside the mind of this little boy, we can now see what he is dealing with. However, in order to do this, the reader must have an understanding of what the dreams mean. I will try to analyze Antonio's dreams.

I think they find it necessary to move so often because it has been a dream for the family of six to have a piece of property like the houses shown on TV. The story begins when the family buys a new house on Mango Street. This new house is the first the family has owned and does not fulfill their dream. The house is simply not big enough for the family. Everyone, including Esperanza has to share a room. The smallness of the house, tells us that the family is poor.

The House On Mango Street is written in a series of vignettes to emphasize essential events in Esperanza's life. Each of these contain important literary choices made by Cisneros to emphasize different things of importance in the book. The vignette “Four Skinny Trees” is extremely prominent in the book. Here, the use of symbolism, personification, and diction illustrates Esperanza's growth from a child to a young women, and the strength she has.

According to Merriam Webster, a novella is an Italian term, which derives from the word “novel,” and means a short novel or long short story. There are numerous novellas in the world of literature; some significant examples include Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. A theme of “influences” is displayed throughout these novellas and can influence our perspective on life. Another popular high school novella is Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, where protagonist, Esperanza Cordero encounters multiple characters, such as Sally, Sire, and Nenny, who help influence her life in both negative and positive ways.

One of the many themes in the novel, Bless me, Ultima is Antonio’s “loss of innocence” throughout the months upon the arrival of Ultima, the curandera. At the beginning of the novel, Antonio is an innocent boy, protected from reality thanks to his age and parents. As the novel progresses, Antonio becomes aware of the bad and the good in life. Antonio’s transition from innocence to experience is shown through particular events.

As a child, Esperanza wants only escape from mango Street. Her dream of independents and "self-definition" also means leaving her family behind without any responsibilities to her family. Throughout the book, her has also faced some situation where is feels ashamed to be part of the Mango Street community and in some instances refuses to admit she has anything to do with mango street. At the beginning of the book near the earlier chapters, Esperanza feels very insecure about herself in general along with the house that she lives in. As mentioned before, she doesn’t want to discuss her name nor where she lives. In the chapter of "The House on Mango Street", "a nun from my school passed by and saw me playing out front. The downstairs door had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before the owner had painted on the wood YES WE ' RE OPEN so as not to lose business. Where do you live? She asked. There, I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there? She responded. You live there? The way she said it, made me feel like nothing". This quote reinforces the fact of how apprehensive and shameful Esperanza is during the beginning of the story, where one can clearly see the state of insecurity of Esperanza. This is ultimately contrasted through the progression of the book when Esperanza maturity is shown in the quote," 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" through this quote you could clearly see the juristic growth from the beginning of the book. Esperanza grows out of her childish and arrogant state to a more confident becomes to feel more empathy towards others, showing her transformation into a confident mature women. Esperanza will even a homeless a place to stay regardless the state or how the house looks like, but

Esperanza and her family are always moving because they do not have much money, but they finally moved into a house on Mango Street where they “Don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise” (703). Although it sounded like a nice place, when a nun from her school saw where Esperanza lived, she said, “You live there?” (703). That made Esperanza feel like nothing and made her realize she needs a real house, one that is really nice. Esperanza wants to change her life and make the best of what she has. She dreams “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever” (707). Esperanza believes that she can change the way she is living and live a better life. She is trying to get a good education to become a more improved and intelligent person so one day she does not have to be poor. Just by having a positive attitude and trying so hard, already makes Esperanza overcome the obstacle of being out of place in her

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. Esperanza shifts from a follower into a confused individual, allowing her to begin her life as a woman outside of the oppressive nature of Mango Street.

Many girls desire a female role model from a young age. The way these women are treated, and deal with this treatment can heavily impact the way young girls view themselves, and their future as well. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street brings attention to issues of sexism and gender roles. This is done through a series of vignettes about the main character Esperanza navigating life by the example of her many role models. Each role model impacts Esperanza in a special way, Sally who is married at 13, Marin who is waiting to be rescued by a man, and Alicia who is balancing school and home responsibilities. These problems coming to light through the many women Esperanza looks up to, drive her to rise above her obstacles, and become more than just another poorly treated woman.

these three have just shows how different they are. Here are just a few examples that make

In the House on Mango Street, a novel by Sandra Cisneros, she suggests the notion that hopes and dreams can be obtained even when people are at the bottom of the totem pole as seen in Esperanza’s desire to live in a better place and find friends.

Believe it or not, people are not entirely unique. It is certain that no one is truly the same as another person, but it would not be ridiculous to think that everyone does in fact share many similarities. After all, the majority of the population grows and develops opinions or values based on what they see or hear. For Esperanza, the protagonist of Sandra Cisneros’s, The House on Mango Street, the perspective she has is built upon her childhood on Mango Street. This coming-of-age novel illustrates how Esperanza’s experiences on Mango Street play an important role during her period of growth. As she transitions into womanhood, Esperanza gains a new understanding of weighty concepts such as gender roles. On Mango Street, she is exposed to a variety of females who fill the role model and non-role model categories. Specifically, Esperanza’s observations of the characters, Marin, Sally, and Alicia, reveal the oppressive or often dangerous roles placed on women and how they ultimately influence the development of her identity.

In the chapter “Sally”, Esperanza learns about sexual behavior from Sally. Sally represents a figure of sexual maturity that intrigues Esperanza. Paying attention to some details about Sally’s physical appearance, Esperanza notices how Sally dresses more provocative than other girls. “The boys at school think she's beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulders and laughs” (Cisneros, 101). Like any other girl, Esperanza wants to be beautiful; she sees Sally as a beautiful doll, one she strives to be like. In the chapter “Red Clowns”, Esperanza experiences her first sexual encounter, although it was not what she thought it would be. She finds herself being sexually assaulted. Forcibly introduced into the adult world, Esperanza learn that fantasies are not always what they are said to be. Esperanza states, “They all lied. All the books and magazine, everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again” (Cisneros, 123). She realizes, bitterly, that sex and love do not always mix, and that boys are not always

Since the beginning of literature, authors have discussed many themes and life truths through their writing, and though they may be separated by centuries of cultural evolution, many of the characters created by these authors share a common theme. Likewise, the novel Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, the novella The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, and the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare are very different stories, yet they also share a common theme. The three of the texts share the common theme of “When people ambitiously pursue their goals, they can be blinded from seeing the reality around them and make illogical decisions.”

The House on Mango Street follows Esperanza Cordero 's transitioning through a progression of pieces about her family, neighborhood, and mystery dreams. In spite of the fact that the novel does not take after a customary sequential example, a story develops by Esperanza’s fortifying toward oneself and will overcomebarriers of poverty, sex, and race. The novel starts when the Cordero family moves into another house, the first they have ever claimed, on Mango Street in the Latino segment of Chicago. The red, unstable house frustrates Esperanza. It is not in the least the fantasy house her guardians had constantly discussed, nor is it the house high on a slope that Esperanza promises to one day own.