Rhetorical Devices In The House On Mango Street
Powerless
Imagine all limbs turned to stone, unable to move or shout no matter how hard one tries. Powerless. This is life for 12 year old Esperanza as a poor, Hispanic girl. Much like a bad dream where one cannot move, Esperanza has no power or voice; her entire life resembles this nightmare. She is discriminated against, not only for her race, but for her gender and social status as well. Dealing with all this unfair treatment, she is easily taken advantage of, leading to a desperation for a better life. She craves for a “real house” but, due to her family’s poverty, they are forced to move frequently into dingy apartments. In The House on Mango Street, Cisneros’s use of rhetorical devices like imagery, analogies, and motifs, helps to create the text’s longing tone.
The author establishes a contrast between Esperanza’s reality and fantasy through imagery. When her family first moved to Mango Street, Esperanza had high expectations for a “real home,” but she was disappointed to live in a tiny, run-down house. She depicts her current house on Mango Street as “small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in” (Cisneros 4). The negative description Esperanza gives of her house shows how trapped she feels because she describes the windows as very small.
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Imagery and analogies describe and contrast fantasy versus reality. Also, the reoccurring idea that staring out windows is like looking at everything unattainable. This tone forces the reader to address the on-going problem of racial and gender discrimination because in this book, longing is caused by discrimination and powerlessness. Esperanza is determined to live in a real home, and by doing so she is slowly waking up from a bad dream, relieved that she can move
What Does The Sky Symbolize In The House On Mango Street
294 Words | 2 PagesIn Sandra Cisneros’, House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s yearning for freedom is supported in Darius & the Sky. Specifically, the vignette begins by saying, “you can never have too much sky” (33). Esperanza’s vision of the sky is symbolic of offering freedom and a realm filled with opportunity. Equally important, is the sky’s role in shaping Esperanza’s identity. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza uses imagery to depict how she is “a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (9).
The House On Mango Street Figurative Language
83 Words | 1 PagesThe 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.
The House On Mango Street Hopes And Dreams
287 Words | 2 PagesHouse on Mango Street analysis essay: Hopes and Dreams 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. One way that Sandra Cisneros suggests this theme is when Esperanza feels ashamed of her current house and knows “she has to have a real house. One she can point to and feel proud of (Cisneros 5) Another example is when Esperanza and the nun are talking and the nun asks where Esperanza lives and she is forced to “point to the the third floor, with the paint peeling”
Imagery In The House On Mango Street
804 Words | 4 PagesEsperanza attempt multiple times to mature much faster than necessary making her feel as though she is stuck. Relying on the literary devices of motif and imagery, Sandra Cisneros, in her novella, The House on Mango Street, shows her audience Esperanza’s struggle to escape into independence. Cisneros encourages her readers to move past the hardships of growing up, despite the barriers in life. Not only is Cisneros’ use of motif showing Esperanza, and her friends, in a tough situation, but also how she is now becoming confused about and growing
Innocence In The House On Mango Street
868 Words | 4 PagesThe 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?
The House On Mango Street Gender Essay
1134 Words | 5 PagesEsperanza acquires a sense of who she is as a young woman. These characters aid in her decided stance on gender roles and how she wants to evade them as she starts to build her own life. Through Esperanza’s narration, the darkness that correlates with the roles of women is brought into light. The gender roles found in the book are still issues today. Such ideas ruin much of society because people have yet to question and altar them.
Loss Of Innocence In The House On Mango Street
257 Words | 2 PagesLoss of Innocence In the book The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros demonstrates in her writing how a child can be forced to mature too rapidly. Esperanza encounters sexism, racism, and discrimination towards the poor that impacted her paradigm of the world around her. The motif occurring throughout the novel is how a young girl must become a woman before they are ready. In the chapter “The Monkey Garden”, Esperanza makes one of her final transitions into the woman, her environment forces her to be, this is shown by the change of her opinion of her shoes, the realization of woman accepting manipulation by men, and her loss of childlike interest in the Monkey Garden.
House On Mango Street Coming Of Age Quotes
1348 Words | 6 PagesThe main protagonist Esperanza, matures from a childish girl to a young confident woman through many critical and life changing events in the story. Ultimately, the author, Sandra Cisneros implements the symbols of confidence, the house on mango street and the metaphor of shoes to show how Esperanza develops into a more mature state. Sandra Cisneros
Windows In The House On Mango Street
640 Words | 3 PagesBecause Esperanza is capable of finding love as she says, the window acts as a device that she can direct her hope through. While fantasizing about a different life, “away from Mango Street”, Esperanza describes a house that she would find nice, a house with “flowers and big windows … [that] would swing open, all the sky [coming] in” (Cisneros 82). Esperanza isn’t content with her current life and wishes for a life with something more, a life with a house to call home. The windows that bring in the sky in Esperanza’s dream home act as a symbol for significance in life, the windows are big because they are part of Esperanza’s hopes that she has been dreaming of through windows and the sky coming in represents Esperanza being wild and free from the bounds of her current unsatisfactory environment. Windows symbolize the novel’s theme of struggling to attain a gratifying life by acting as an object for the characters to direct their hope
Poverty In The House On Mango Street
1117 Words | 5 PagesMany 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.
Esperanza's Identity In The House On Mango Street
1627 Words | 7 PagesThey grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.” (Cisneros 93) Esperanza deduces that she must follow their example, and make her way into the world, and for that, she’ll have to move away to, hopefully she wishes, her dream house – her soil for embedding her
Essay On Obstacles In The House On Mango Street
1002 Words | 5 PagesEsperanza 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.
Inequality In The House On Mango Street Analysis
1173 Words | 5 Pages“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.
House On Mango Street Culture
437 Words | 2 PagesThe 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. Mango Street is the source of Esperanza’s growth through her childhood, and it hides sadness and longing underneath stereotypes of Hispanic people. The characters that live in the broken-down neighborhood all seem to represent pigeonholed views of Latino individuals.
Analysis Of Esperanza In The House On Mango Street
1115 Words | 5 PagesIn the book, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is portrayed as a young innocent girl that drastically changes over the course of the book. Esperanza is new to mango street and encounters many challenges but also positive experiences that she is able to take away from mango street. In order for Esperanza to transform as a human it was inevitable for her to face the struggles on mango street. As Esperanza matures throughout the novel she experiences three major developments that shape her future through the awakening of maturity, responsibility and her awakening of her interest in poetry.
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