House On Mango Street Identity

Everyone is affected by life’s circumstances. The responses to those experiences can have a positive or negative outcome in one’s future. In Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, the protagonist, Esperanza, gives us her views on life, how she views herself, and she views her future. Not only does she give her perspective throughout the story, she tells us of the numerous experiences that she grows through. These experiences have an impact on her, creating new emotions and new adult like perspectives she has never faced before. Esperanza’s environment shifts her identity from being an insecure child to a confident, mature young adult who realizes the decisions that adults must make.

Esperanza’s response to her environment reveals an insecurity about herself early in the story. In one of Esperanza’s experiences, she finds herself ashamed

As she starts to reflect on her name, and what her environments thinks of it, she explains, “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color… At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth” (Cisneros 10 & 11). Esperanza cares a lot about what her environment tells her about herself in order to be accepted. During one’s teen years, people are typically very self conscious about how they look or how they are labeled in front of their friends. They are willing to do almost anything to fit in. This quality that a child obtains matches the process in which Esperanza judges herself from what those around her think. She wants to change her identity to fit in with the environment that she has been put into. In “A Rice Sandwich”, Esperanza continues to struggle adapting to her new surroundings. She faces another experience when she hears about a new dining hall for kids who live