The House On Mango Street: Seeking Independence Essay

In today’s world there are countless social problems. People are often treated as an inferior or as if they are less important for many different reasons. In The House on Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros addresses these problems. Throughout the story Cisneros does a thorough job explaining and showing how these issues affect the public. This novel is written through the eyes of a young girl, Esperanza, growing up in a poor neighborhood where the lifestyles of the lower class are revealed. Cisneros points out that, in today’s society, the expectation of women and their treatment, discrimination based on poverty, and discrimination because of a person’s ethnicity are the major

"She sits at become afraid to go outside". The leave home, she would need permission. She evolves from a victim of child abuse to a slave-like wife. Esperanza sees this despair throughout her story.

She was born in Chicago, Illinois. Cisneros grew up in a Latino family around the 1950s and 1960s. She had a Mexican father and Chicano mother. Cisneros was encouraged by her mother to read and was not insisted with spending all of her time performing classic “women’s work”. Cisneros welcomes her culture with open arms, but acknowledges the unjustness between the genders within. Having experience growing up in a poor neighborhood in a working class family while facing the difficulties created by racism, sexism, and her status, Esperanza longed to leave the barrio. Later, she finds her capability to succeed individually and find a “home with herself”; she worked to recreate some Chicano stereotypes for her community. Cisneros didn’t want to

Thesis statement: Esperanza has a variety of female role models in her life. Many are trapped in abusive relationships, waiting for others to change their lives. Some are actively trying to change things on their own. Through these women and Esperanza’s reactions to them, Cisneros’ shows not only the hardships women face, but also explores their power to overcome them.

In life many people set goals for themselves. For some people it maybe a goal such as obtaining a high test grade and for others it maybe to one day own a race car. Everybody has a different outlook on life and everyone has different goals in which they one day hope to achieve. The people who achieve their goals are those who are motivated and determined to do so. When these goals are achieved it is then when you are a hero to yourself.

Eventually, Esperanza decides she does not need to set herself apart from the others in her

“I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I’m me. One day I’ll jump out of my skin. I’ll shake the sky like a hundred violins” (60). In the story “The House on Mango Street”, the author Sandra Cisneros uses sentences full of imagery, metaphors, and word games, to show how self definition is a result of the people and places surrounding you. This is represented throughout the book when Esperanza wants to change her name, living in a male dominated society, and when she wishes for a new home.

Currently Sandra Cisneros resides in San Antonio in a purple house and she describes herself as “nobody’s mother” and “nobody’s wife.” Both Frida Kahlo’s and Cynthia Y. Hernandez’s works convey the idea of having one’s culture limit one’s freedom and individuality. Cisneros and Esperanza are both victims of this idea and realize that the only way to live one’s life freely is to defy the roles and limitations created by one’s culture.

In the vignette “Boys & Girls” Esperanza states “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 8). This is the first key and memorable piece of symbolism in the story. As the red balloon suggests, Esperanza is a vibrant young lady with great potential,

Esperanza’s gradual establishment of her identity as an independent woman in The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, is illuminated as she encounters multiple hardships that relate to the unfair expectations put on Hispanics and the mistreatment of women. For example, in the vignettes “Cathy Queen of Cats” and “A Smart Cookie”, Esperanza is faced with two occurrences in which the racist expectations of Hispanics are revealed. Specifically, in “Cathy Queen of Cats”, Esperanza’s first friend Cathy, says that she will be moving away in the next week. Cathy states “...the neighborhood is getting bad.

Thoughts and feelings are human characteristics which distinct us from one another and cannot be duplicated or falsified. Cisneros bestows the feature of an internal view on Esperanza by having her speak of her thoughts and feelings in first person narrative throughout the novel. Cisneros starts acquainting this feature early in the story for such topics as laughter: “Nenny and I don’t look like sisters…not right away. Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have the same fat popsicle lips like everybody else in their family. But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would

Esperanza’s dreams offer her both hope and torment because she does not know whether or not she will have a chance to achieve them at all. Esperanza is a young girl who is a Mexican-American. She lives on Mango Street with her family in their first real house. In this vignette Esperanza is reflecting on her name and how she got it. She talks about how it was her great-grandmother's name and how she was kept from her dreams by marriage: “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.

(Cisneros 10). These lines show that Esperanza is going to make sure that she follows what she believes in because she will not inherit her great-grandmother place by the window. For this reason,

Esperanza has characteristics of all three of these types of people, and through Esperanza’s story, Cisneros shows her audience that everyone struggles, but in the end it is possible for one to make it through his or her struggle. Some of the audience may not agree with Cisneros at first, as some people feel that nothing will get better, but eventually, whether or not they finished the book recently, everyone in the audience will begin to agree with Cisneros. In addition, Cisneros simply hopes to inspire her readers through a story of a young girl striving for success while struggling to figure out her

Throughout the book Esperanza is not waiting for a man to come and change her life like most of the women in the book. Most female role models on Mango Street have been or are waiting for that special someone to come and change their lives. Esperanza is different though. She doesn't want a man, she wants a house in the hills with beautiful gardens outside and sky that she can always see. One of the reasons she wants to live up in the hils is because the people that live in the beautiful houses are close to the stars as she says, “People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth” (86).