The Street of Shame The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, is a coming of age novel that describes the challenges that Esperanza experiences during her stay on Mango Street. The Street is adorned with the evidence of poverty by the destruction of the houses and the lives of the people living on the street. Dreams of escaping Mango Street is apparent by people longing for a better life far away from the community. Esperanza escapes Mango Street in her writings and longs for the day that in reality she will leave Mango Street to follow her dreams of a real house. Shame and identity is the main theme of “The House on Mango Street”, the theme and title are connected through stereotyping, association, and the poverty cycle. Firstly, when Esperanza encounters Cathy, she is thrilled at the idea of having a friend. Cathy states that she can be her friend until nest Tuesday because they are moving. The reason they are moving is because “the neighborhood is getting bad”. (Cisneros 14). This makes Esperanza feel ashamed because Cathy’s statement infers that the Latinos moving into Mango Street is …show more content…
“Shame is a bad thing, you know? It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains” (Cisneros 58). She has a beautiful voice and many talents that could have allowed her to break the cycle of poverty. She chose to let shame take control of her, in hence, she lost her identity along the way. In turn, this only increased her level of shame. All these things considered, the theme shame and identity is linked to the title” The House on Mango Street” because her Mama never escaped the cycle of poverty and is still experiencing the results of her shame. Esperanza knows that through her writings that she can find her identity and break the family cycle of
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.
The House on Mango Street is a novel about a Latina girl becoming of age in the streets of Chicago. Her family is very poor, and throughout the entire book she transforms from a little girl to a young lady. In the book, the main characters are Esperanza, Nenny, Mama, Papa. Sally, Lucy, and Rachel. Esperanza and her family moves a lot, but the little red house on Mango Street helped her become the person she is.
Characters Comparison/Contrast Essay Intro: Include one or more sentences summarizing each story and describing each character. Esperanza and house on mango street: Esperanza is a young girl who lives for a year on mango street and gradually grows into a mature young woman by a series of encounters and situations on her quest to learn more about female sexuality and later conclusion on rejecting sex as a form of escaping reality but rather focus on the importance of community and family. At the end of the book, Esperanza becomes a important figure for women’s help in her community and proves herself as an artist and writer through her analysis and observations through her writings.
House 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”
Esperanza knows she is better but also says, “They will not know I have gone away to come back.” (Cisneros, 110) Esperanza changes the way others view of her but deep down her identity will always contain mango street. Her accomplishments add on to her identity, but the bad and good of Mango Street will help her make decisions in the future. They don’t define her but still hold a place in Esperanza’s
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.
The House on Mango Street Essay Opportunities and social class are all seen in society, there are many different opportunities for many different people, and your social class can reflect your opportunities. In the book, The House On Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza was born into a large family and is represented in the lower class. Throughout her life, Esperanza and her family have moved around and have never owned their own house, Esperanza has always dreamed of them owning their own house. One day she thought her dream was coming true but the house was far from what she expected. There are numerous ways the author, Cisneros, uses tone and syntax to emphasize opportunity and social class.
In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza has similar experiences to the author, Sandra Cisneros, because they both grew up poor, as a child, they both moved often, and they also expressed signs of low self-esteem and sadness. Esperanza and the author have similar experiences because they both grew up poor. This is found in the vignette, “The House on Mango Street”,
(Cisneros 109). This is a radical change from the first vignette, in which she says that the house on Mango Street is not a real house. Esperanza says it isn’t a house you can belong to. It also states, “One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango.
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. Very early on in The House on Mango Street Esperanza encounters multiple women who are living in abusive relationships or are stuck raising and providing for children on their own. One example of these women is Rosa Vargas. She is a mother to one too many children, who often misbehave: “…how can they help it with only one mother who is tired all the time from buttoning and bottling and babying, and who cries every day
“All discomfort comes from suppressing your identity”(Bryant H. McGill). We can not decide upon our own identity; It comes from our hopes, dreams, memories, culture and experiences. We can not suppress or change who we are or where we came from and must except ourselves. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros introduces the main character Esperanza, who is initially ashamed and tries to repress parts of her identity. One of the main themes in The House on Mango Street is E. acknowledging her name and mango street as part of her self identity.
Esperanza is often humiliated not only by where she lives, but also by her physical appearance, hence causing a restriction in her climb to a higher social class. Esperanza is frequently ashamed of her family’s broken-down house in an urban, poor
In the House on Mango Street, Esperanza is seeking for an identity of her own. In her current neighborhood, she struggles with economic, cultural, and gender based barriers to personal growth, and she believes that changing her surroundings is her solution; however, she realizes that to discover her identity, her ultimate destination is a home in the heart. The house on Mango Street was one that was the opposite of what Esperanza had dreamt her entire life. The house is, “…small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you 'd think they were holding their breath... bricks...crumbling in places, and the front door...so swollen you have to push hard to get in". (Cisneros 5)
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. The House on Mango Street shows that women are sexually abused, not having the opportunity to receive the same amount of education as men and have unequal contributions to the workforce.
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. 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.