Symbolism In The House On Mango Street

Growing up on Mango Street, girls had to take two steps backward to take one forward. Just like ballroom dancing, women let men take the lead and sacrifice an extra step to continue moving on the floor. When Sally escaped from her father and married the marshmallow salesman, she had to give up her youth and femininity.

In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisernos, the main character, Esperanza, goes from having a negative outlook on life to a positive one. Many difficult situations Esperanza faces show her changing perspective on the world around her. An example of Esperanza’s negativity is her feelings towards her home. Esperanza and her family move into a new house, on the not-so perfect, Mango Street. Esperanza has this dream of a “...white [house] with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence” (70), but, “The house on Mango Street isn’t it” (73). The home she lives in is described as being “...small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in” (49).

In Sandra Cisnero’s novella, The House on Mango Street, Esperanza sees the importance of learning about her sexuality as she is growing up from her childhood to adolescence. In the first vignette, “The Family of Little Feet,” Esperanza and her two other friends receive three pairs of “dancing shoes” which they all are excited about. They get the idea to put them on and walk around town showing off how beautiful the shoes are. They feel good and special in front of everyone up until Mr. Benny at the grocery store notices the girls and asks, “Your mother know you got shoes like that? Them are dangerous. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops” he threatens (41). At first, Esperanza and her friends don’t pay attention to what Mr. Benny

The House on Mango Street uses three vignettes to state that innocence shelters children from the extreme truth of the adult world. To begin, in “The First Job”, an older man unexpectedly forces himself on Esperanza: “I thought I would because he was so old and just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go” (Cisneros 55). Esperanza’s innocence allowed her to kiss an old man on the cheek for his birthday because she could not imagine anything inappropriate occurring. However, the man “grabs [her] face with both hands” and “doesn’t let go”. This violent action shatters the innocence that has hidden Esperanza from the adult truth. Next, Esperanza witnesses how Tito and the boys treat Sally in “The Monkey Garden”: “One of Tito’s friends said you can’t get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes” (Cisneros 96). The adult game played angers Esperanza as the boys use Sally to their advantage and Sally “[pretends] to be mad” but still willingly complies. Esperanza, unlike Sally, sees the situation as wrong because of her innocence, but when she attempts to save Sally, the boys laugh at her. Embarrassed, Esperanza is exposed to an adult type of game and now feels confused from this break in her innocence. Finally, Esperanza completely loses her innocence after being sexually assaulted at the carnival: “You’re a liar. They all lied. All the books and

The symbol for the theme, everything is not as it appears, relates to Rafaela, Sally, and Esperanza is a bird cage. The girls are trapped in a cage much like beautiful birds are kept from the outside world. However, all the girls dream of becoming worth something to the outside world. Rafaela and Sally are physically trapped by the male figures in their lives, where as Esperanza is mentally trapped within her own insecurities.

Growing up as a child in a poor family, Esperanza Cordero was very ambitious. She was ashamed of her family and her house, and she always had dreams of one day having a beautiful house on a hill, with flowers all around. A house she wouldn't be ashamed to point to and say it was hers. She knew

The most important Theme in The House on Mango Street is identity. Identity is a very

In “Red Clowns”, she idealizes Sally, a girl her in her neighborhood her age who she befriended, because she was more sexually mature than her and she was affiliated (flirted, danced, etc) with boys. In the novella, Esperanza goes with Sally to the fair and Sally abandons here for a boy. Esperanza, alone with no help or protection, was sexually assaulted by a group of boys that remained after Sally and the boy left. Esperanza expresses her frustration with Sally and blames her sexual assault on Sally “... you lied, you lied. He wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, I love you, I love you Spanish girl” (Red Clowns). She learns that sex and love do not go hand-in-hand, which is what pop culture advertises, and realizes that media will never change, so women like Sally and others who have more experience with men should debunk the myth. She knows that women have to help each other in the world they live in. This causes her to never completely leave Mango Street; she doesn’t want to abandon women who are in a dangerous place that Sally left her in (metaphorically and physically). “The Family of Little Feet” focuses on Esperanza’s journey in puberty. Esperanza, Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel receive used high heels, a staple of

The book I read was “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. There was many themes in this book. The two I want to focus on are Loss of Innocence and The Power of Words.

Next is Marin; she is a beautiful green-eyed Puerto Rican woman. She sells Avon products and babysits to make a living. Her family lives in Puerto Rico and she’s living with her cousin, saving money for when she goes back to Puerto Rico. Alike Esperanza, Marin is hardworking; she desires a real job where you could wear nice clothing and look beautiful. Marin often relishes in singing and dancing and dreams of getting married to a wealthy gentleman that will take her to a large house far away, altering her life forever, unlike Esperanza who doesn’t wish to be tied down in

In the novel, The House On Mango Street, women face numerous challenges in their lives. Women face abuse, objectification, and oppression. They are also subjects to the societal roles that hinders them from being free and successful. Cisneros utilizes metaphors to reveal the theme of society’s gender roles restricting the lives and sexuality of women.

Throughout the novella, The House On Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros conveys Esperanza's ideas and thoughts through her everyday surroundings. The metaphors in this bildungsroman exploit Esperanza’s maturity growth from start to finish. Without these metaphors, it would be a significant challenge for the reader to comprehend and connect with Esperanza. Cisneros demonstrates the themes of the evolution of thinking and personality through the metaphor of balloons, trees, and bums.

Cisneros uses simple syntax and tells the story in vignettes to present the story as if it were told in Esperanza’s eyes. Vignettes are short little descriptions of an event or idea. The House on Mango Street is strictly told in vignettes which makes sense as it is told in a child's eyes. These vignettes tend to get larger as the story progresses and as Esperanza becomes more aware of her surroundings. As a result of this, the vignettes not only become more complex, but more mature as well. In vignettes such as “Hairs” and “My Name”, Esperanza writes about simple innocent ideas like what she likes and does not like, but later in the story vignettes such as “The Monkey Garden” and “No Speak English” cover much more mature situations such as the patriarchy and rape in the near-poverty-line Latino neighborhood of Chicago. Esperanza finds herself in these situations because of how she begins to mature and become an independent sexual being. With all of this information in mind, Cisneros uses the power of the vignette convey the fact that Esperanza is becoming an individual sexual being.

In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a little girl from a Latino heritage is given birth to. Not literally, but in the sense of characterization. Esperanza is a fictional character made up by Cisneros to bring about sensitive, alert, and rich literature. She is the protagonist in the novel and is used to depict a female’s life growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Cisneros creates the illusion that Esperanza is a real human being to communicate the struggles of growing up as a Latina immigrant in a modern world, by giving her a name, elaborating her thoughts and feelings, and illustrating her growth as a person through major events.

With this in mind the internal conflict is important, because it shows Esperanza’s sensitivity about everything what concerns herself and her being insecure. One of the vignette that tells about is called “ Chanclas.” It recounts about her being non confident, because of her old shoes that she gets every year. For example, the quote says, “ Then Uncle Nacho is pulling and pulling my arm and it does not matter how the new dress Mama bought me is because my feet are ugly.” (Cisneros 46). This quote shows that she cares so much about one detail and even the prettiest dress cannot divert her attention. She does not pay attention to the dress, because she just thinks about her shoes and she assumes everyone will look at her feet. Another quote which supports her insecure, is “ Meanwhile that boy who is my cousin by first communion or something asks me to dance and I can’t. Just stuff my feet under the metal folding chair stamped Precious Blood and pick on a wad of brown gum that’s stuck beneath the seat. I shake my head no. My feet growing bigger and bigger.” (Cisneros 47) According to this quote Esperanza does not want people to notice her imperfection so she stays out of society contact. It is not because she does not want to she explains it as a cannot thing. She does not want to embarrass herself. The quote which stays for her having low self esteem is “Until my uncle who is a liar says, You are the prettiest girl here, will you dance, but I believe him, and yes, we are dancing. And Uncle spins me, and my skinny arms bend the way he taught me, and my mom watches, and my little cousins watch, and the boy who is my cousin by first communion watches, and everyone says, wow, who are those two who dance like in the movies, until I forget that I am wearing only ordinary shoes, brown and white.” (Cisneros 47) There is a clear statement that supports, that she thinks about