The House on Mango Street

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.

In the first short story The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is outside her apartment building where she lives with her siblings and parents. They six were Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, Nenny, and Esperanza. She describes the place they were living in by saying that it was on the third floor of an old building and as well said " The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old...We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons" (Cisneros 4). Esperanza and her family are going through hardships because of the landlord, even when they are paying their rent. She describes the apartment building as old and useless to the owner, this means that the building has to be very torn down for someone who owns it not to care about it. Esperanza begins to experience difficulties at a young age by having to shower with water from the washroom, they did not even use buckets which can indicate that they did not own one. Usually it is minorities who as well recycle the bottles they buy to give them...

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...k wearing those old saddle shoes with her nice pink and white dress. Here poverty stroke Esperanza and hard on the back, she could not even enjoy the new dress she finally got. She did not have good shoes, there for she was not able to dance at the party because she felt like everyone would stare. She finally decided to dance with her uncle and forgot about the fact of not having nice shoes except for the once a year pair of shoes. As she continues to explain about her shoes she says, "… I am wearing only ordinary shoes, brown and white, the kind my mother buys each year for school." (Cisneros 47), here Esperanza proves that they do buy them new shoes every year, and every year they are saddle shoes because they last longer (the entire year until, until next September).

Works Cited

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.