The House On Mango Street Essays (Examples)

She feels she doesn't really belong to that house because that is not the house of her dreams. That is what prompts her to start writing. Her creative pursuits help her stay sane so she doesn't feel so trapped by the "ghost" of the sad red house. "I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free" (p. 101).

It is highly interesting that house in this novel doesn't only represent the physical house but also the imaginary dwelling in the mind that Esperanza escapes to in order to alleviate the anguish. The house is thus a place of escape for her. When the reality becomes too unbearable, Esperanza seeks another dwelling. This dwelling exists in her mind and produced by her creative skills.…

Esperanza transforms into a girl who wants nothing else but to leave the house on Mango Street and all the neighbors behind into a woman with a real sense of responsibility to the people in her neighborhood. She goes from thinking only of herself to really considering the lives of those in her community. This sense of responsibility and her set of values show that Esperanza has transcended even herself.

Esperanza's most important transformation is, arguably, her transformation into a real writer. In the beginning of the story, Esperanza can only imagine stories in which she is one of the characters; however, by the end of the story, Esperanza is able to imagine stories that don't involve her -- and this denotes that she is becoming a real writer and a true artist. It is ironic that through her writing she is able to detach herself from her neighborhood while,…

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Thus, although she is not aware as such of her position in society, she realizes however that the house they moved to does not correspond to what her family had been dreaming about. The small and crammed house offers almost as little space as the other places they lived in. When describing the small house, the author introduces the single metaphor in the speech of the child narrator, saying that the windows were so small that one would think "they're holding their breath":

But the house on Mango Street it's not the way they told it at all. it's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath."

The metaphor is very significant as it highlights the main theme of the story: the interplay between the personal space and the space of the others, or the relation between the…

The frequency of window imagery in the novel highlights both the importance of expectancy ("Esperanza) and houses. Esperanza's namesake was said to always be looking out of a window, after she was 'carried off' by a man, symbolizing Esperanza's fears of maturity. Esperanza is ashamed when people point to her house through windows, like the nun at her school points at the house from a window to indicate why Esperanza cannot eat her rice sandwich with the 'special students' who do not live nearby. The first chapter of the novel chronicles all of the many problems with the house she lives in, from the crumbling steps to the leaky plumbing, and worst of all the fact that it, just like all of the houses Esperanza has lived in her life, is leased.

A window is something both 'of' a house, but also allows an individual to look away and beyond…

House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros [...] theme of search for self-definition. The protagonist of this novel, Esperanza, narrates a series of "chapters" concerning her life, her world, and the barrio as she sees it happening around her. Throughout the book, as Esperanza watches the world, she struggles to discover just who she is, and where she fits in the world around her. This self-definition is a compelling theme of the novel, but it also shows the difficulties many young Latinas face as they come of age in America.

Published in 1984, many critics believe "The House on Mango Street" is one of the best Chicana stories written. Author Sandra Cisneros writes with knowledge and pathos of growing up Latina in America because she herself experienced the difficulties of growing up in multi-cultural family. Her mother is Mexican-American and her father is Mexican, and she spent her childhood "commuting"…

House Mango Street Sandra Cisnero"(book) the question paper: Is book represe

It would be exceedingly difficult to represent all of Latino culture in any book, regardless of how talented the author is. Nonetheless, Sandra Cisneros is that rare breed of author for whom, particularly as it relates to her unique blend of poetry and prose, virtually nothing is impossible. She has been hailed as "a major literary talent" (Cruz, 2010, p. 56). One of her most revered works, The House on Mango Street, details her life and those around her who grew up in the continental United States. Virtually all of the characters (and the vast majority of people that the characters interact with, for that matter) are Latino. Still, the Latino culture is, if nothing else, extremely diverse and as variegated a group of people as one can find on the earth itself. This fact takes on a particular…

El Epilogo

Yo se siempre seria Esperanza y yo se siempre seria de Mango Street. Pero hay mas. Yo he aprendedo mucho en estos anos.

Yo he aprendedo de amor. Amor verdadero, y no el amor egoista.

Yo recuerdo todo. No quiero olvidar.

Yo quiero recorder los nombres, las caras, las amigas, mi gente.

Yo quiero recorder el dolor, si, tambien el dolor. Porque el dolor puede seria nuestro maestro.

Quiero dar a mis hijos la oportunidad aprender, conocer Mango Street.

Para estas razones, yo no quiero salir.

Si, todavia quiero una casa propia. En esta casa seria amor.

Adentro esta casa seria flores de todos tipos: en cada color, como un arco iris.

Seria una cocina magica, donde hacer las delicias de la vida.

Entonces, nosotros ser juntos. Comemos juntos y duermen juntos.

Todo lo que ha pasado en Mango Street, todo paso por un razon.

No mas. Ya…

house is the symbol in the House of Mango Street.

The title of the novel A House on mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is both straightforward and deceptive. The name of the street suggests a quiet street in a nice neighborhood, a street lined with trees in a lazy afternoon. As soon as the first chapter begins, the reader will find out that the street and therefore the house in question are anything but. Houses do indeed symbolize in the novel stability, anchors in childhood memories, family life, and shelter.

The narrator introduces a grim series of houses she has spent her childhood in, culminating with the house that will give the title of the novel. Houses are for the adult remembering childhood memories a symbol of a life style, reminders of a harsh or sometimes, happy reality. A house stands there for the one remembering the days she spent…

However, there is also danger to the sexuality that lies behind sweetness, as when a girl Sally, marries a marshmallow salesman to escape an abusive father, entering a union that seems as bad as the home she is leaving.

A final symbol of the novel is that of play -- few adult women, except for the insane Ruthie, are seen enjoying themselves over the course of the novel. Girls can play at jump rope and look at clouds, but they worry about how the burdens and cares of an adult life -- like abusive or absent husbands, children, and money worries -- will weigh them down, as their bodies mature. Men are shown playing and gambling, but women must put their own pleasures aside for fathers, husbands, and brothers. Early on in the novel, Esperanza comments how even in her family the boys and the girls tend to separate as…

Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003)

Introduction / Background History

Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime took its toll and he served seven years of nightmarish incarceration at hard labor. But, with the knowledge that he had not been born a criminal, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, and he vowed to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard-core youth and turn them away from a life of crime.

Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating,…

Sandra Street by Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony was born in 1930 in Mayaro. His father was Nathaniel Anthony and his mother was Eva Jones Lazarus. The young Michael Anthony was brought up in San Fernando in the busy industrial developmental units of Trinidad of that time. He found himself working in the heat and dust of the foundry even as a young boy and this influenced him into thinking of an entirely different sort of occupation for himself. He started thinking of journalism as a viable option but lacked the necessary qualifications for such a job. Michael Anthony soon traveled to England to work towards a Diploma in journalism. In 1963, he managed to produce his first publication called 'The Games were coming' and thereafter there was no looking back for this talented 'giant' among writers of this generation. (Anthony, Michael. "A Giant among Us")

Michael Anthony's Sandra Street is…

Esperanza's community have on her identity?

Esperanza comes from a poor Latin family. She is Chicana and her friends Lucy and Rachel are both Chicana-American as well. Although she tries to socialize and connect with her community, that community creates the urge to leave for Esperanza. The house Esperanza moved to alongside her family is small. She has no privacy and she lives in a racially segregated neighborhood.

This may be helpful for someone moving into the country, but for someone like Esperanza, it creates further divide. On top of that, she feels shame for the condition in which she has to live in. She tries to cover up the fact that her family is working class. This is very typical for children living in recent immigrant families where the parents may have immigrated and the child was born in the country. Children like this experience a sense of disconnect…

Gertrude Stein, The Gentle Lena

The most obvious thing about this story was that nothing really happened. At the start, continually reading about the "patient, gentle, sweet and german" Lena and her "peaceful life" I was expecting there to be some twist to the story, perhaps with Lena snapping and becoming something other than patient, gentle and sweet. However, this twist did not come, which is probably what makes the story work so well. It is a simple and sad story about a life lived without consequence. Having Lena resolve the situation in some way, would not be true to the story, since any action would mean Lena's life did have some meaning.

Overall, it is a story of a woman accepting her life without questioning it. Lena does not appear either content or happy, instead it is more like she is numb. This is emphasized by the fact that…

Ignorance Bliss? A Comparison and Contrast of the Characters and Themes of Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street" and "Araby" by James Joyce

Plot Summary

Character Summary

Ignorance, although comfortable is not bliss at all.

Character

Gender

Age Difference

Culture

Catholicism and sexuality in Joyce

Catholicism and family in Cisneros

Home

Significance of home in Cisneros

Significance of leaving home in Joyce

Both the protagonists of Sandra Cisneros and "Araby" by James Joyce are young adolescents, poised upon the brink of realizing that older people do not have all of the answer in life. The tales detail the coming of age of the young protagonists, as they realize that the adults in their respective worlds are not as good or wise as they seem to be. Cisneros's female heroine comes to her realization when she is contrasting the promises of her family about the house on Mango Street her…

The novel opens seven years after Gabo's mother, Ximena, was murdered by coyotes -- or paid traffickers -- during an attempt to cross the border. Her mutilated body was found, her organs gone -- sold most likely. Because of the fear surrounding this border town and the lure of the other side, all of the characters become consumed with finding afa. These people are neglected and abused. Like other fiction works on this topic (such as Cisneros's The House on Mango Street), The Guardians (2008) is rich in symbolism and flavored with Mexican aphorisms. The novel also shows the reader how complex and perilous border life is when you're living in between the United States and Mexico.

The book is important when attempting to understand the challenge of the border town life and it is, at the same time, a testament to faith, family bonds, cultural pride, and the human…

Chesla, pp. 1). Even though Hispanics have had to adapt to the American landscape if they wanted to thrive in the U.S., Hispanic communities have done a great job at keeping their customs and traditions.

One can actually say that Cisneros put a lot of her real life experiences into the character of Esperanza. The author has always felt that the men around her have attempted to impose themselves, pressing her to assume a typical female role. This is seen in "The Family of Little Feet" in several instances. Mr. Benny threatens the girls that he'll call the police if they don't leave. Also, he says that it is dangerous for them to be walking around with high-heeled shoes. It is obvious that Cisneros had had trouble developing in a community where women were not necessarily considered equal to men. Certain men have even went as far as comparing women…

Spanglish is a combination of Spanish and English, with each of these two languages having more or less of an influence on the final product depending on the circumstances. The speech of Spanghlish users involves them bringing together the two languages and creating a dialect that is not native to the country they inhabit. Spanglish is widely used in Hispanic communities in North America, as they prefer it as an intermediary dialect assisting them to connect with the English-speaking community.

Living in two cultures can have a strong impact on a person, as he or she gradually comes to switch back and forth between cultural values promoted in each of these respective environments. This is perfectly demonstrated by individuals speaking Spanglish, taking into account that they need to concentrate on adopting attitudes that enable them to improve their relationship to both English and Spanish-speaking communities.

Although Spanish plays an integral…

Female Sexuality and Self Development in Chicana Culture

Eysturoy (1996) points out that studies of women's sexuality related to Chicana culture have focused on the quest "for authentic female self development." She notes that this process involves environment and psychological factors combined, and involves "coming to terms with multiple social and cultural forces" in addition to coming to terms with internal and external issues that often impede Chicana women from realizing "individuation" or understanding their sense of individual self (77).

The author notes that a recurrent theme in much of Chicana literature centers on the evolvement of a child into an older women, and that in fact a majority of the literature related to Chicana women focus on the process of self development that is not just a search for identity, but rather a method for engaging Chicana readers and exploring or articulating a process that will ultimately lead to…

Holler if You Hear Me by Gregory Michie

ccording to teacher Gregory Michie, the portrayal of urban schools in the popular media tends to have the character of either two, polarized extremes: "On one hand are the horror stories... On the other hand is the occasional account of the miracle worker" (Michie 2009: xxi). Michie's account entitled Holler if you hear me of his own experiences is Michie's attempt to offer a more balanced perspective. Michie was a public school teacher in a largely nonwhite, inner city Chicago school. He chronicles his own journey in his book, as well as those of some representative students in a series of profiles that unfold in both the first and third person.

What is particularly moving about Michie's account is his willingness to follow up with some of his students, to determine how their education continues to affect them. One boy, who seemed…

And it is the tragedy of not knowing that Marin imagines in the story's last paragraph, when she envisions the family he left behind in Mexico as they "wonder, shrug, remember" the pretty boy who vanished and was "never heard from…again."

Cisneros arranges "Geraldo No Last Name" around two basic structural facts. One is the filtering of the story through Marin's consciousness, so that the subject of the story is not really Geraldo's brief life and death -- it is about what somebody like Marin thinks about when she contemplate somebody like Geraldo. And the second fact is, of course, the emphasis given to the different elements of what Marin considers: in some sense, the sad fact of Geraldo's death is subsidiary to the sad facts of his actual life as an illegal worker in a foreign country, who will die without ever seeing his family again. The fact that…

hero? Does it depend on whether one is a man or a woman? Is the nature of heroism engendered? Are there different categories of heroism - a heroism of the mind and a heroism of the body, for example? The life and work of the novelist Jean Rhys help us to understand the nature of the heroic. Rhys herself may be considered to be a hero even though her life was not by conventional means a success. Indeed, it might be considered to be a stereotypical failure: She drank heavily, had a number of unhappy love affairs, and seems to have lost her talent or at least her will to write for decades. But in the end. A woman who called herself a "doormat in a world of boots" proved by her life and in her work that doormats are durable indeed.

Rhys's sense of herself as a certainly less-then-conventional-heroic…

She is literally locked in the house and it becomes her "protector" of sorts. It is as real as a character because it is has a type of power over Louise. She can never leave it. After hearing the news of Brently, Louise runs up to her room and "would have no one follow her" (635). The room takes on a persona as it becomes the one thing with which Louise shares her secret of freedom. Here, she can relish in the thought of being free without worrying about the disapproval of others. Here, she can express the excitement she feels when she looks outside and considers freedom as something within her grasp. This is the only place that knows her true heart and it is the only place in which she has few minutes to taste the freedom she desires. The room envelops her and allows her to this…

Multi-Ethnic Literature

The focus of this work is to examine multi-ethnic literature and focus on treating humans like farm animals that can be manipulated for various purposes. Multi-Ethnic literature offers a glimpse into the lives of the various writers of this literature and into the lives of various ethnic groups and the way that they view life and society and their experiences. Examined in this study are various writers including Tupac Shakar, Dorothy West, Petry, and others.

A Rose Grows From Concrete

One might be surprised to learn that Tupac Shakar was the writer of many sensitive poems. Upon his death in 1996, Tupac's mother released a collection of poems entitled 'A Rose Grows From Concrete', which includes various love poems among the 72 poems in the collection. Tupac writes:

Things that make hearts break.

Pretty smiles

Deceiving laughs

And people who dream with their eyes open

Lonely children

Unanswered…

it's been fun, but I don't really know anyone here. I don't really do the bar scene, and that's pretty much what everyone else who lives in my building does. So I guess it's time to look for somewhere else."

equired: A Little Extra Green

Although those living in Manhattan would probably still think of the neighborhood as a bargain, by a more objective standard (and during a recession), the rents are certainly not conducive to anyone without a firm standing in the upper ranges of the middle class.

A 1000-foot apartment at Bedford and Third, for example, boasts "recent renovation" at $2,900 a month.

Whatever might be left over after rent might be spent at Antidote Chocolate. One particularly interesting aspect of the fact that this chain has moved into the neighborhood is that most of its stores reside in far-pricier and more established neighborhoods.

This suggests not only…

82). He introduced plantations that included potato, cabbage, tomato, chilli and brinjal, and helped the Dongria Kondh create irrigation channels from the streams flowing down the mountains (Sachchidananda, p. 83).

The anthropologist also succeeded in resolving feuds and negotiated trades with the Domb so they could enjoy the benefits of fresh fruit and produce without exploiting the Dongria Kondh. According to Sachchidananda on pae 84, among the benefits of having a person who truly understood and cared about the Dongria Kondh and the Domb was that there was a more peaceful interaction between the two indigenous tribes. A "pragmatic rather than mere humanistic approach" certainly aided in solving development and socioeconomic issues as well (Sachchidananda, p. 84).

Vedanta Resources' mining proposal

Meantime, a proposed mining project that was conceived by the Vedanta Resources (of London, UK) -- owned by Indian tycoon Anil Agarwal -- created a major controversy over the…

Man's Ability To Treat Humans Like Animals

It is a vivid fact that the feelings of cruelty, discrimination and racial distribution are embedded well in to human nature since its very inception. This world depicts several cases where humans treat other humans like animals and ignore their right of living peacefully and according to their own will. This article highlights the work of several writers who have depicted the different ways in which humans have been treated brutally by other humans. Majority of the cases deal with racial discrimination and poverty-based cruelty issues encountered by humans. The article presents an in depth analysis of the works of seven different writers and how their works represent the ill treatment encountered by the human race.

Charles Chestnutt's "Po Sandy" and its Linkage to Human Cruelty

"Po' Sandy" written by Charles Chestnutt is basically the story of Sandy, who is made the slave…

On a wider scale, the struggle of these immigrants would be familiar to many immigrants around the country. Many of them come to this country to contribute their talents and ideas. On a personal note, for example, my girlfriend's father Farouk is a West Indian immigrant from Trinidad & Tabago. After years of taking night classes, he earned his associate's degree in Electrical Enginnering. Today, Farouk is an engineer working with EMC. He is earning a good salary and holds seven patents with EMC.

Diaz's stories are an argument for keeping the American Dream open, for Farouk, for his characters and for the vast majority of immigrants who choose to come to the United States. After all, much of the progress of this country stems from its historical openness to immigrants. Thus, to safeguard the American Dream means to keep its ideals open to all.

eferences

Diaz, Junot. Drown. New…