Esperanza's Identity In The House On Mango Street

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I chose the first quote about Esperanza name because it shows the importance of language. I believe that language is the number one symbol of cultures and it is an expression of who we are as individuals. In this passage, Esperanza struggles to find her identity through the history of her name. We learned that Esperanza had inherited the name of her grandmother, but does not want to inherit her grandmother place of being locked into a house through marriage, and spending the rest of her life looking out the window in sadness. Esperanza says her name mean hope in English, which has a positive connotation, but then, chooses negative words such as sadness, too many letters, and a muddy color to associate with the meaning of her name in Spanish. …show more content…

In this quote the author states that that culture forms our beliefs which is absolutely true and that culture is made by man in power. In both stories we learned that the main characters are from similar cultural background and shares the same beliefs. However, the narrators in both stories are trying to break out of these cultural barriers because it only favors men and dehumanized women. In both stories, we see that women are voiceless, and powerless, they have no life of their own, they are slaves in their own homes. Women are subservient to men, the are ostracized by their family and society for wanting to be something other than a housewives. According to the supplemental reading, women are made to feel total failure if they don’t marry and have children. In House on Mango Street, we learned that Esperanza mother was a smart woman, but she had to give up her dreams to become a housewife because that was her role in life as a woman.These women suffers mental, physical, and emotional abuse daily but they couldn’t do anything to stop this from happening because the men had all the power, they were in charge of implementing all the rules and laws. The narrators in both stories feels like they don’t want to belong, they desires a life of the own, a life that puts them in the position of men, a life that elevate them, and goes against the social norms of their

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