Symbolism and Cisneros\' the House

Symbolism and Cisneros' the House on Mango Street

Perhaps the most important symbol in Sandra Cisneros' the House on Mango Street is that of the house itself, and houses in general. Houses have a profound symbolic value in our culture, specifically American culture. "As safe as houses" is a common expression, as is "a man's home is his castle," and "the American Dream of home ownership." Houses are viewed as extensions of the self. However, in the House on Mango Street, the narrator Esperanza does not live in a house that she feels is truly her own, although her family has recently bought the crumbling, peeling structure.

The family has lived in many rented homes and apartments before, but never a place of its own. This past, chronicled in the first chapter, symbolizes the transient nature of their lives, and the instability of the American Dream for this Chicano family. At the beginning of the tale Papa and Mama have acquired a new house on Mango Street after telling their children many stories about the glories of owning a home. After the landlord at their old apartment drove them out, the family decided to realize their dream, an American Dream, but Esperanza says the new house is not like houses on television. It is still not beautiful and perfect, like she was promised in her parents' stories. The class differences of Mango Street in regards to houses are evident in one chapter about a girl named Cathy, whose family has just inherited second house, and whose family is moving away, further down Mango Street, just when families like Esperanza are moving into the area. The prejudices motivating this decision to move are obvious.

The narrator's unstable and unrepaired house on Mango Street thus represents a work in progress, like the adolescent narrator's character, like the American Dream itself for Latinos. Like the family, the house does not look like what is seen on television -- it is not white and it is not inhabited by a white family. The house has peeling paint, no yard, and not enough bathrooms for all of the six family members, it is old and it smells. For the narrator, this makes it not quite a 'real' house, just like the family does not quite feel like 'real' Americans. Her parents promise that one day they will move to a better house, but Esperanza is not so sure. Still, she hopes that she will own her own home, and when she meets women who have their own homes, like the mentally ill Ruthie who has come home to live with her mother, or the 'voodoo woman' who tells her fortune later in the novel, she observes them with awe and fascination, knowing they have lived in their own, special 'spaces.'

Houses symbolize economic security and acceptance, and also having a 'place' in the world. Esperanza is not the only character in the novel who feels this way, however. Her cousin Marin also wants to be spirited away to a big house, far off from Mango Street. But instead of trying to change her own life, Marin is always waiting, and her dreams are never fulfilled. This theme of the 'waiting woman' is another symbolic motif that runs through the book. Esperanza is named for a great-grandmother who was always waiting for Esperanza's great-grandfather, and Marin is always waiting for a man to change her life. The frustrations of waiting for a man who can transport you, rather than trying to transport yourself are embodied in the theme of the 'waiting woman.'

Waiting and abandoned women -- either because husbands have gone off to war, or because they have left, are common characters in literature, but Esperanza is not one of those characters. She has contempt for Marin and fears embodying her grandmother's fate, or Rafaela who is locked in her home by her husband while he gambles every Tuesday night. Initially, she admires Marin's knowledge of men, her short skirts and smoking, but gradually sees that they do not really provide her with a way out of Mango Street. Later, she will mourn the fate of Minerva, a woman who writes poems but is beaten and left by a cruel husband, and is weighted down with the burdens of a conventional, feminine existence.

Another minor character who makes a profound impression on Esperanza is Darius, a young boy in her class. Darius is considered foolish because he is always looking at the clouds and teases the girls in silly ways, but he says that he sees God in the clouds. When Esperanza is with her friends, they name the clouds, showing their imagination and the many possibilities that are possible for children to envision, when they still believe that the sky is the limit in terms of their ambitions. At one point in the novel, Esperanza says she will "shake the sky, like a hundred violins." The sky and the clouds are always changing, shifting, and when things are bad for a moment, they can rapidly become better, so the clouds and the sky are evidence of possibility and leaving the confines of class, gender, and Mango Street entirely.

Esperanza even sees popcorn in the sky, Darius sees God -- the imagination dictates reality when looking at the clouds. Reaching for the heavens is symbolized by clouds -- but it is important to remember in the myth of "Daedalus and Icarus" while Icarus, wearing wax wings, flew too close to the clouds, burned off his wings and fell to his death. The darker side of ambition, of reaching for the sky and flight, is seen in the novel in the persona of the Vargas family, whose child, significantly named 'Angel' like a winged angel or a winged Icarus, as he falls to his death. Although Esperanza is not overly fond of the Vargas family, the plight of the winged Angel acts as a timely reminder of the dangers as well as the delights of freedom and flight. The Vargas children are too free, too unconstrained, and although Esperanza may occasionally chafe at her mother's over-protectiveness, she would not want to be like Angel Vargas either -- dead and in his grave. Soaring for the clouds has a place, but there still must be some caution and discipline. Still, Esperanza says that there is too much sadness, and not enough sky in her world, and looking at the sky gives her a feeling of safety, rather than makes her feel afraid, as strangers do when they accidentally wander onto Mango Street -- strangers of different colors unfamiliar with the ways of the town.

This sense of being an 'alien' on a metaphorical level (and on a literal level, in the case of one Mexican 'wetback' worker who dies because he cannot seek medical care because he is an illegal alien) runs through the novel. It even is expressed in the way that food is used as a symbol. Food obviously forms the other, core part of the title the House on Mango Street. Mangos are beautiful, tropical and exotic fruits that are in striking contrast to the ugliness and poverty of the actual home, just like Esperanza herself. The family is poor, so they are frequently hungry for more -- more experience, as well as more food (significantly, 'popcorn' is one of the things Esperanza sees in the clouds).

Also, food often forms a core, defining mark of alienation between Esperanza and others. Esperanza eats a rice sandwich on schooldays, which represents both her poverty and also the significance of rice and beans in Mexican culture. Esperanza is upset that she must go home to eat lunch while at a convent school, but the fact that she feels singled out because of her eating habits is symbolic of a larger sense of feeling 'singled out' in American culture. Food is also important during festival days and marking significant events in the life cycle, and the novel chronicles Esperanza's own struggle for maturity.