Chicago, a city where select areas act as a harbor for immigrants, is extremely diverse in culture. In The House On Mango Street which is set in Chicago, the setting plays a vital role to the plot. In fact, the whole novel revolves around the setting directly. The story takes place in the poor Latino neighborhoods of Chicago where Esperanza Cordero is growing up. Throughout the story, Esperanza embarks on a journey where she goes from resenting her heritage that confines her to the community she resides in, to learning to embrace her background. Specifically, the setting functions as a means of applying culture to the story and establishing Esperanza’s values. Before realizing the value of one’s place of origin, Esperanza expresses adamantly …show more content…
For example, it was normal for a girl to get married before or shortly after the eighth grade. Young boys start working for a living at this point to support a wife and a family. Additionally, the men treat the women like property rather than a person. It is common that a man would keep his wife or daughter locked up in the house so she couldn’t run away from him. Women stare out windows, wishing that they were allowed to leave the house. Esperanza accepts this a commonplace, however, she doesn’t want to be like these women. This further attributes as motivation for her desire to abandon her community. In turn, she learns to value her freedom as a woman and to respect herself enough to not let a man keep her locked up like a prisoner.
The seclusion of the small communities she’s always lived in keeps Esperanza naive to the world around her. All she knows is that she wants to experience whatever it is that’s out there. This causes her to value the accumulation of knowledge. Furthermore, since her community is impoverished, she values frugality. For instance, when her neighbor gives her high heeled shoes, she is overwhelmed with excitement of having ownership of shoes that are not simply for everyday
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.
The women that surround her are silent, and many of them cannot leave the house. She watches girls have children and marry just to escape their home because that is the only thing they know in life. Esperanza already knows she wants to be more than what is expected of her as a poor, Latina girl, and will fight the expectations placed on her in the subtlest of ways. “I have begun my own quiet war. Simple.
In The House on Mango Street written by Sandra Cisneros, the dominant theme for these collection of vignettes is the dreams and beauty expressed throughout the book using poetic devices. For instance, Esperanza grasps onto the dream of having her own house as she remains discontented with the house on Mango Street. On page 5, she stated, “I knew then I had to have a house. A real house.”
Esperanza 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.
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.
Societal expectations are a part of everyone’s life, male or female. From the day people are born, there are roles they are expected to assume-- wife, homemaker, father, provider, mother and many others. While these aren’t necessarily negative, the stigma of not fulfilling these roles can be unpleasant. While the roles we are supposed to choose aren’t always clearly defined, the judgement that comes from choosing to take certain actions in life, like settling down or becoming a mother is palpable. Throughout The House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s view of the world is largely shaped by the people around her, which are her neighbors, family, and friends.
The House on Mango Street is a touching and timeless tale told in short vignettes. It tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Her life, and the lives of the people around her, are laid bare to the readers in this touching novella. In the beginning, Esperanza is not accepting of herself. Her family’s poor financial situation, the sadness of the people around her, and the problems she faces in her daily life make her very cynical.
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 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.
Esperanza the protagonist of the novel. In the neighborhood where she lives, many people that does not know the place are afraid to get there. The fact that they would think it is a neighborhood full of criminals. "They think we are dangerous. They think they will attack them with shiny knives.
In 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.
In Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, the character of Mamacita has the strongest ties to her home she left, and perhaps the strongest desire to escape from Mango Street and return home. Mamacita is a woman with a husband and child, who moved to Chicago from a latin american country. She is somewhat overweight, doesn’t know much English, and stays mostly in her apartment for unknown reasons, singing songs from her native country and crying. Her husband fights with Mamacita, often over her desire to return, and her child is becoming assimilated into American society against her will. Because Mamacita has such strong ties to her heritage and origin, she clings to it tightly, resisting assimilation in any way possible, and highlights
The House on Mango Street follows Esperanza Cordero 's transitioning through a progression of pieces about her family, neighborhood, and mystery dreams. In spite of the fact that the novel does not take after a customary sequential example, a story develops by Esperanza’s fortifying toward oneself and will overcomebarriers of poverty, sex, and race. The novel starts when the Cordero family moves into another house, the first they have ever claimed, on Mango Street in the Latino segment of Chicago. The red, unstable house frustrates Esperanza. It is not in the least the fantasy house her guardians had constantly discussed, nor is it the house high on a slope that Esperanza promises to one day own.