Sometimes in life, people wish for things they do not have. No matter how hard people wish on a star or on a candle, the wishes never seemed to be answered. Everyone has felt that bitter disappointment on Christmas morning when they finally realize that they were never going to be able to get what they wanted. This is the same exact feelings that the characters in Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. Unlike us, the disappointment for these characters last throughout their childhood. Esperanza, Rachel, Nenny, Sally, and Lucy are among the kids growing up on Mango Street. They all long for friendship, love, and a better life, but all these kids face are the harsh reality of the "real world." In the society that Esperanza and her friends live in, love takes a back seat when it comes to relationships. "Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them"(11). These are the longing words of Esperanza. While growing up on Mango Street, Esperanza finds herself in a community that she feels she does not belong to. With all her heart, she longs for a true friend that she can tell her dreams to and will understand her for it. These wishes seem easy enough to grant, but Esperanza soon finds out that there is more to friendship. "If you give me five dollars, I will be your friend forever"(29). Esperanza discovers that she can not have anything for nothing. Rachel and Lucy sure enough become her friends, but only after she helped them pay for the bike. Esperanza never does truly find a real friend who shares the same goal as she does because all the friends she... ... middle of paper ... ...ango Street, it would always be a little tag that followed her. This is so because she learned and grew up in that house. She may think she does not belong, but she belongs as much as the four trees that were on the street. Esperanza and her friends always knew that in their hearts, there was no way to escape the lives they lived. The residents of Mango street all had their own ideas on love, friends, a good life, but what they got were the totally opposite. The reason being is that they did not strive for what they wanted. Instead, they waited for it to come to them. That was why they ended up with what they got. It is amazing that the line between fantasy and reality is so thin. Fantasy and reality are often mistaken for one another because as part of human nature, it is the only way we can deal with disappointment.
about a way that she could go to Eretz Island, Israel where she could be safe. She left her
In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, there is an emphasizes on how rough it is to be part of the low economic class . Through her words you can create an image about the way poverty affects children. She goes through the book making great remarks on the topic. The different experiences that Esperanza goes through have a lot to connect with her family's financial status. She specifically describes her feelings about the poverty they live in through three of her short stories. The three short stories in which poverty seems to be an obstacle are The House on Mango Street, Our Good Day, and Chanclas. When the book begins the downgrading of Esperanza's esteem begins with it.
“Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without me having to explain them” (9). These are the longing words spoken by Esperanza. In the novel The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is young girl experiencing adolescence not only longing for a place to fit in but also wanting to be beautiful. This becomes complicated as Esperanza becomes more sexually aware. Throughout the novel, Cisneros argues the importance of beauty and how Esperanza deals with beauty as a part of her identity. When Esperanza meets Sally a new friend, Esperanza’s whole world is turned upside down. Esperanza’s views on beauty change from a positive outlook to a negative one by watching how beauty has damaged Sally’s life.
becomes very mad and changes her tone in the way that she isn’t the cheerful happy
was no longer alone. She had friends to love her and guide her to the next
Everyone has specific characteristics and qualities that make them the way they present themselves. Young, middle-aged, and old people are constantly forming the essentials that affect their self-awareness through their daily activities. Forming one’s identity is an ongoing process, because every person in the world can change people one way or another. In The House on Mango Street, the experiences young Esperanza faced day to day develop her true individuality.
through when what she desires most in the world is about to be taken away.”
Esperanza, the main character of The House on Mango Street, a novella written by Sandra Cisneros in 1984, has always felt like she didn’t belong. Esperanza sought a different life than the ones that people around her were living. She wanted to be in control of her life, and not be taken away by men as so many others around her had. Esperanza wanted to move away from Mango Street and find the house, and life she had always looked for. Through the use of repetition, Sandra Cisneros conveys a sense of not belonging, that can make a person strong enough to aspire to a better life.
her husband, but in this letter she seems to be very distressed and worried. She
and Maggie to give her almost anything she wants. Dee also changed her name to Wangero
Who does not want a home? A shelter to sleep and a roof to dine under. Of course no one wanted to stay home forever, but once in awhile and even when far away, they will long to return to that sacred place, the place where they grew up and the place they have left behind, home. The desire for a home (or house to be precise, though there was not much of a different for this case) was realistically reflected through a fiction work of Sandra Cisneros, a Mexican American write, a story called The House on Mango Street, where we shall discuss about its setting, plot and character.
In class we read the book House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the main character Esperanza lives in a lower working class neighborhood and street called Mango Street dealing with poverty. Her house is an important symbol in House on Mango Street. It represents Eperanza’s process of maturing as a person and the change in her perspective of poverty and struggle being shameful, to it being something to embrace and use as motivation. This is a very important part of the story because it is in many aspects where we are from that make us who we become. This is interesting to see in the book as her opinions and perspective of things inside and outside of her neighborhood are shaped by her experiences.
"I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry."
Sandra Cisneros's writing style in the novel The House on Mango Street transcends two genres, poetry and the short story. The novel is written in a series of poetic vignettes that make it easy to read. These distinguishing attributes are combined to create the backbone of Cisneros's unique style and structure.
Esperanza is constantly influenced by the women in her own family including her mother, sister and other various family members. Even early in the novel Esperanza recognizes that the boys hold more powers than the girl. She states “The boys and the girls live in different worlds” and how once outside of the house her brothers will not talk to the girls (10). Her brothers recognize that if the other boys in the neighborhood see them with their sisters, they will be mocked. This signals that Esperanza has internalized that the men hold more power even from an early age and her male siblings hold mor...