Homelessness In John Cheever's The Country Husband

I stroll into my room, swing open my closet door, and I peer in to see what I am to wear for the night. As always, I end up closing that door after .2 seconds, turn on my heel towards my roommate’s room. “What do you want to wear of mine tonight?”

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a semi-autobiography shown through the eyes of the story’s narrator, Esperanza Cordero, an adolescent Mexican-American girl who is about thirteen and growing up in an impoverished, mostly Latino neighborhood in Chicago. The novel is a coming of age story, told over the course of about a year in a series of standalone vignettes, written in a non chronological order, that use poetic and figurative language, such as metaphors and similes, to convey its themes.

In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, a young, impoverished girl with Hispanic origin, named Esperanza adapts to her new life in Chicago, on Mango Street. Throughout her time living on Mango Street Esperanza observes how other people are living around her, especially women and young girls like her. Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many are trapped in abusive relationships, waiting for others to change their lives. Some are actively trying to change things on their own. Through these women and Esperanza’s reactions to them, Cisneros’ shows not only the hardships women face, but also explores their lack of power to overcome them.

In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the story is developed through the eyes of a young girl Esperanza. She learns about the realities of life in a house that she recently moved into. There are many characters that are written as she learns about her new neighborhood. The three most influential characters in the novel are Sally, her Mother ,and Marin.

As young men and women mature, barriers will appear in their everyday lives. Discovering how to move around these obstacles is challenging. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, various characters realize the struggle of breaking free from a trapped existence to move forward into independence. Using a variety of literary devices, Cisneros brings her readers on an adventure, showing them these hard encounters through motif and imagery.

Many people are undermined by the drawbacks of belonging to a low socioeconomic status. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is raised in a poor, Latino community, causing her to be introduced to poverty at an early age. This introduction of poverty affects Esperanza in many ways, one including that she is unable to find success. Esperanza struggles to achieve success in life because the cycle of poverty restricts her in a position in which she cannot break free from her socioeconomic status.

The House on Mango Street is set in a poor, primarily Hispanic neighborhood. Author Sandra Cisneros creates an atypical, yet easily digestible world for the reader to experience while learning about Esperanza’s childhood. The culture of her environment influences Esperanza’s development as she becomes a young woman, and contributes to the book’s driving theme of self-empowerment.

The House on Mango Street is a touching and timeless tale told in short vignettes. It tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Her life, and the lives of the people around her, are laid bare to the readers in this touching novella. In the beginning, Esperanza is not accepting of herself. Her family’s poor financial situation, the sadness of the people around her, and the problems she faces in her daily life make her very cynical. However, Esperanza’s negative view of herself slowly changes as she begins to focus on her larger community and her place within it. Through this, Cisneros shows that knowing and accepting where we have come from is an important part of growing up and determining who we are.

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.

The House on Mango Street, is a broad interpretation of a Hispanic girl’s life and her coming of age. Throughout the course of the book, Esperanza, the narrator and protagonist, is constantly fighting a war between her autonomous mind and her forever changing sexual body. You, Esperanza, whose name means hope in English, how did you lose your hope? Your innocence? Your purity? Esperanza, after exploring her changing world profoundly and deeply, experienced a series of psychological changes (changes in her maturity, intelligence, and including personal degradation associated with pubescent teenagers) as she encounters men whom loudly express the negative, masculine stereotypes constantly argued for by feminists. Cisneros uses multiple symbols,

“No, this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I’ve lived here (Cisneros 106).” This quote shows Esperanza’s unwillingness of accepting her poor neighbourhood because of the violence and inequality that has happened in it. In the House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, shows that there is a direct link between inequality, violence and poverty. The House on Mango Street shows women are held back by the inequalities that they face. Cisneros shows that racism prevents individuals from receiving job opportunities which leads to poverty and violence. The House on Mango Street shows that the basis of violence and poverty are social inequality. This social inequality limits lower class from getting employed. The neighbourhood in the novel is impoverished because of the inequality in their society.

“Rosa Vargas’ kids are too many and too much. It’s not her fault, you know, except she is their mother and only one against so many” (Cisneros 29). In the novel The House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, touches on the many negative consequences of a single, impoverished mother raising an overwhelming amount of children. Poverty, discrimination, parental and neighborly responsibility, and respect are all issues and social forces that act upon the family; their presence or lack thereof cause several grisly occurrences to take place.

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.

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.