The House On Mango Street Research Paper

The House On Mango Street is a novel about how one's childhood shapes their identity. Different events in adolescents equate to an altered identity. The protagonist and narrator, Esperanza, tells the story of her past in borderline poetic vignettes. Simply the way the chapters are written illuminate how Esperanza views her childhood. The whole novel has a dark undertone that leads the reader to believe something drastic and terrible could happen at any time. It tells of a family who moves around quite a lot, promising of a dream house but never delivering. The result is a girl feeling as though she is being pulled in many different directions, never having the pleasure of settling in one place and feeling comfortable. The House On Mango Street is a novel that depicts how your childhood affects your identity.

All though there are copious roadblocks for her in achieving such a thing. The biggest being that in her culture it is not the norm for women to own their own houses. Instead their husbands or fathers provide them housing, which often feels more like a prison. As a result the women in The House On Mango Street feel tied to the men that they are surrounded by, staying indoors and staring out the window. A woman who lives on Mango Street, Rafaela, has to ask the children of Mango Street to buy her coconut and papaya juice because her husband locks her indoors while he’s away. That is the opposite of how Esperanza wants her house to make her feel. Esperanza’s grandmother is a perfect example. “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” (11). She feels she already is like her grandmother because of their shared name, but will do everything in her power to have a different life. She sees her grandmother as a window to her future. The search for a house throughout the novel is a metaphor for her struggle to feel a sense of