Students can face a daily struggle in school, as each one has to study for specific classes to reach a certain goal. Each potential student would then have to choose a goal where he or she would want to reach and, because of that, he or she would push on to escape some item or idea of his or her choosing such as poverty, family or home. Over thirty years ago, Sandra Cisneros published The House On Mango Street, which is a novel made up of vignettes about a little girl named Esperanza and her journey throughout a year’s worth of hardships as a Mexican female. Unlike her mother, she is able to go to school and has the ability to decide what she wants to be and where she wants to go. In the novel, school can be a source of new opportunities through …show more content…
In the vignette, Minerva Writes Poems, Minerva is a teenager who has to take care of her two children and deals with her husband who constantly argues and leaves. Esperanza describes Minerva with pity, knowing that she is “only a little bit older than me [Esperanza]...Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky” ( Cisneros 84). Minerva’s young age is an important part of the statement, since she should be in school and not being a mother. Because of this, she may have dropped out to join in marriage for more income and lead herself to a dreadful future of beatings and a harsh lifestyle, which is taking care of multiple children as a young teenager and her husband’s insults. Minerva herself does not like living with her husband, as seen in the text. She is constantly in tears due to her unhappy life and no longer wants to go through this anymore, which can occur when one quits school for an easy life with a man with more cash. Throughout this, Minerva has to be able to vent out her feelings, so she trusts Esperanza and “lets me [Esperanza] read her poems…[and] She is always sad like a house on fire-- always something wrong” (84). Esperanza gets to read poems about how Minerva feels, living in a situation that cannot be fixed due to her position in the household. On the other hand, she knows that Minerva …show more content…
A Smart Cookie is a vignette focusing on a moment where Esperanza’s mother is cooking and looks back on her past. She realizes that “I [she] could’ve been somebody, you know” (90)? This quote is significant as she had many distinguishable traits back then, but had never put them into use. Esperanza’s mother uses the word “somebody,” which may be degrading herself as she believes that she could have been a better person. By “better person,” this could mean she could be living a quiet life and not taking care of four children in a broken down home. The statement itself is short and simply strikes the reader in surprise, by how much Esperanza’s nameless mother gone through and come to realize this. She then points out the fact that Esperanza goes to school and instructs her to study hard, using examples of her godmothers who are both alone and cannot take care of themselves. Then, Esperanza’s mother finally gave her reason to why she had quit school which was because she did not “have nice clothes. No clothes, but I [her mother] had brains” (91). Her reason to stopping her education, altogether, was what stuck with her for the rest of her life. Because of this, Esperanza’s mother did not take any action to continue working, because she felt shame for being poor. This is ironic as this is pointing out her
Esperanza believes that “Nenny and [her] don’t look like sisters … not right away”(17). On the surface, Esperanza
In the novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros a 12-year-old Latina girl who moves into a house on Mango Street but hates it. It's small red with a tight door. She thought school would be a good idea but when she told people her name, students started to make fun of her. Cisneros deepens readers’ understanding of Esperanza’s identity with the use of figurative language.
Esperanza acquires a sense of who she is as a young woman. These characters aid in her decided stance on gender roles and how she wants to evade them as she starts to build her own life. Through Esperanza’s narration, the darkness that correlates with the roles of women is brought into light. The gender roles found in the book are still issues today. Such ideas ruin much of society because people have yet to question and altar them.
Her mom teaches Esperanza many life lessons throughout the story. The reader learns that the mom dropped out of school because she “didn't have nice clothes” (91). The mom regrets this decision as staying in school could have let her lead a better life in a wealthier place. Esperanza quickly realizes that she wants to stay in school to move out of Mango Street. This mom is also there for emotional support when Esperanza needed it.
Many girls desire a female role model from a young age. The way these women are treated, and deal with this treatment can heavily impact the way young girls view themselves, and their future as well. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street brings attention to issues of sexism and gender roles. This is done through a series of vignettes about the main character Esperanza navigating life by the example of her many role models. Each role model impacts Esperanza in a special way, Sally who is married at 13, Marin who is waiting to be rescued by a man, and Alicia who is balancing school and home responsibilities.
Esperanza says that she will come back, she will come back for “the ones I left behind... the ones who cannot out”. (Cisneros 110). Esperanza is able to go through a change and accept who she is through her community and her family. She is able to use her situation to empower herself, and to be hopeful in her own
Esperanza is not proud of her heritage, she even wants to change her name. Her friend she meets,
The quality of Esperanza’s education matters since she is in poverty; for Esperanza to get a job better than those at fast-food places, Esperanza needs a sufficient education. With this in mind, if Esperanza wants to escape her social class, she needs to make a lot of money and hence, she needs to have a skilled job which requires education. For this reason, Esperanza’s path to a higher social class is even harder for her to follow since she is not guaranteed a high-salary job later in her life. Esperanza’s chances of escaping her low social class are low because of the education she
Still Esperanza does not get what is going on at this point. She is still so naïve and innocent. Sometimes the reader forgets how young she actually is because of the things she is going through at such a young age. Her mind and her decisions are moving at a faster pace, but she is still so blind to the world.
You don't pick your sisters, you just get them and sometimes they come like Nenny.” Today, most of the older siblings in families do not like their younger siblings, but they understand you can’t pick what type of sibling you want in life. She also compares the bond that she shares with Nenny to Rachel and Lucy. Esperanza didn’t understand why family is so important, until about on page twenty-three her aunt died and on page twenty-two, it says “Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room.
She wants to overcome her childish tendencies and transition into womanhood. When Esperanza sees Sire’s girlfriend her interest in Sire and his relationship increases. She even begins to imagine what it would feel like to have a boyfriend. “I want to sit bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt” (73). This represents the arrival of puberty, which is demonstrated by Esperanza’s desire to behave in a grown-up way.
Esperanza’s environment shifts her identity from being an insecure child to a confident, mature young adult who realizes the decisions that adults must make. Esperanza’s response to her environment reveals an insecurity about herself early in the story. In one of Esperanza’s experiences, she finds herself ashamed
The male-dominated society that Esperanza grows up in forces the idea that women are weak and should stay locked in their houses while men go off to work. The men are immoral and seedy, as expressed in the chapter in which a homeless man leers and asks for a kiss from the little girls. Esperanza experiences the evil of her community when she is sexually assaulted, causing her to lose her previous desire to explore her sexuality. Before being assaulted, she wanted to be “beautiful and cruel” like her friend Sally, because Sally was what she understood to be a perfect woman. However, after her rape she decides that she needs to discover her own identity for herself.
Esperanza finds out that she needs to become promiscuous in order to be popular like Sally and she’s not comfortable with that idea. Later on Sally and Esperanza go to the carnival, Sally leaves her alone to go with a boy. Esperanza is now by herself vulnerable and ends up getting raped. She realizes that boys are not what she thought they were, so she decides to focus on herself. Esperanza changes what she thought she wanted for the future.
When upstairs, she starts crying while having a conversation with the nun, saying “I always cry when the nuns yell at me, even if they’re not yelling.” This is yet another example of Esperanza’s shyness and social awkwardness. Lastly, after being told that she can eat at canteen for the day, she cries and eats her rice sandwich alone. Esperanza is also physically weak and malnourished.