Isabelle Muldowney Mrs. Itzen English III, Honors 12 April 2023 Cultural Context of the Novel The House on Mango Street The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros takes place in a low-class neighborhood of Chicago around the 1960's. The story narrated by a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, as it follows her growing up and coming to grips with her surroundings. The house is essential to the story as it is a symbol of pride and stability as it is the first house owned by the Cordero family. This setting creates conflict as they all try finding their identity and a place in the world through their new home and new life. During this time, men see women below them and they are often beat in the environment Esperanza grows up in. This also affects the character development as she watches so many …show more content…
In the book, Esperanza refuses to be reformed by men and refuses to ever get married or act dictated feminine ways. The economic status of the Cordero family is not told outright, however, based on context clues is it evident they are plebeians. Even though Esperanza never mentions they are poor, she struggles to make a life for herself when the cycle of poverty is constant in her life. Being raised poor also forced her to be more aware of the different social classes within her community. She becomes insecure and embarrassed because of her family's lack of wealth. She attempts to hide her poverty as she hides her unappealing shoes at a party and lies about what house she lives in. This creates a sense of isolation and worthlessness as Esperanza thinks herself unwanted because of the way she grew up. This is not
How would you feel when you grew to realize the street you were raised on wasn’t good for your wellbeing and that you needed to get away? Well, ‘The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros is a story about Esperanza’s childhood growing up in Chicago and how she develops as she gets older throughout the book. She realizes throughout the book that she didn’t belong on Mango Street. It takes whomever is reading it on an adventure through Esperanza’s point of view on her life. The book shows an overview of her childhood through several small short stories put together.
She however is very reactive to this situation, she doesn’t tell anybody what happened, she steals late passes, hides in an abandoned janitor closet, and eventually ditches school. That example shows how irresponsible she is. House On Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is about a young girl who moves into a new house with her family in Chicago Illinois in the early 1980’s. Esperanza is not a very happy person, especially after the year she had at the house on Mango Street.
Esperanza has to move a lot because her family can’t afford to live in places that are big enough for their family. For example, “We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember” (3). However, the house on Mango Street is the first house that is theirs, even though it isn’t the house they dreamed of.
Esperanza lives in a poor, shabby neighbourhood and comes from a family with scanty wages. She feels ashamed of her ‘home’ with all the judgemental comments going on in the environment. “You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There.
Although she was already ashamed of her house before she felt that the way people around her spoke of her house justified the way she thought of it. She couldn’t find the good or beauty in her home since no one else did. In the beginning of the chapter she mentioned how her parents described to her, “Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. ”(4). The quote shows how Esperanza was given hope that she was able to live in a home that was as beautiful as she can imagine it to be.
However, by the end of the story she ends up finding herself and her goals. Self-Respect is an important value that Cisneros is tries to impart to her readers because Esperanza always feels like she does not fit in, and she does not want to end up like the rest of her neighborhood. Esperanza learns that it is hard to fit in
Mitchell Curtis English 9 / Period 6 Mr.Boyat 17 October 2016 Three Influential Characters in The House on Mango Street 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.
Not only is it that Esperanza cares so much about living in her house but so does her family. Esperanza tells stories that “This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up
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.
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
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.
The House on Mango Street is about a young girl named Esperanza and the different challenges she faces throughout her life. She has a big family that consists of 5 other people and has moved to different homes many times. As she moves to the house on Mango Street she is disappointed at the fact that the house was not the house of her dreams nor the one she imagined it to be. The house on Mango Street is an improvement compared to Esperanza’s previous homes, but it is still not the house she or her family dreams of, and throughout the book Esperanza feels that she doesn’t belong there. As a family of 6 people, it consists of different responsibilities including taking care of younger siblings and so Esperanza has to take care of her younger
Esperanza and her family live in the house on Mango Street. Esperanza said, "The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody." (3) This quote shows that Esperanza and her family are proud to own a house of their own, but the reality of her situation is that she is still very poor and the house is not expensive to own. Towards the end of the book, Esperanza says, "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back.
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’s interest is writing poem, appears in many of the chapters where it explains a way of bonding with her community by sharing poems with one another. Because Esperanza has become a writer her observations strengthen throughout the novel. One example of how she matures through writing is in the beginning of the book she told stories that were obviously meant for a younger audiences but through the middle of the book she started to use more observation based upon what she saw which helped develop the story more for the reader. This change shows that she is becoming an artist, and also that she is starting to distance herself from her community, since she focuses more on capturing experiences than living through them, she starts to further her self from interaction and focuses more on observation of the people around her. By the end of The House on Mango Street, she knows that she underwent a huge transformation and her relationship with mango st is starting to weaken.