Name Removed
English
September 11, 2014

The Loss of Innocence in “Monkey Garden”

In the chapter, “Monkey Garden,” from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the garden symbolizes the archetypal Garden of Eden from Genesis. Similar to Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree, Esperanza loses her innocence in this mystical backyard. As an under-privileged child on Mango Street, Esperanza witnessed adult problems that most children her age would never dream of, especially the maltreatment of women. In this fantastical children’s garden, the kids escaped their real-life problems in search of the lost treasures the garden holds. The rich imagery Esperanza weaves into her description shows the evasion of her problems: “There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theatre curtains.” The images of Mars and the theatre imply entering a fictional or distant world without everyday challenges. In addition, the kids on Mango fabricate rumors that align the Monkey Garden with the Garden of Eden, “Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything.” Through her escape into fantasy, Esperanza kept her innocence. Through it, she stayed a child until the next day. Despite the seemingly irrevocable purity of the Monkey Garden, Sally’s kissing game with the boys not only defiles the image of the Monkey Garden but also substantiates the gender inequalities suffered by the women of Mango. Esperanza’s love for Sally drives her to protect Sally against mistreatment. When Esperanza talks to Tito’s mother about his exploitive game, she becomes a symbol of the women on Mango Street. “Those kids, she said, not looking up from her ironing. That’s all?” The implications of this simple response show the social situation the ladies face. The ironing, a menial household chore, represents the ball and chain of marriage. Even though Esperanza believes that Tito’s game is wrong, his mother, accustomed to the female oppression on Mango, passes off this heinous act as harmless. In spite of this, Esperanza still decides to stand up for Sally and symbolically for women. When Sally and the boys laugh at her, she loses any last sliver of belief she had of gender equality. Feeling the need to hide, “everything inside [her] hiccupped.” Just as a hiccup is irrepressible, Esperanza suddenly cannot contain her emotions, “I wanted to be dead, to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like black snails.” Esperanza realizes that death is preferable to becoming a part of the prevalent abusive relationships between men towards women. The images of rain connotes misfortunate and bad events. The color black, worn at funerals, symbolizes death. In this case the death of Esperanza’s innocence. It is in the Monkey Garden that Esperanza is exposed to the harsh truth of good and evil, the same as Adam and Eve in their mythical garden. It is unfortunate that Esperanza, Sally, Marin, and other young women on Mango Street witness and become a part of a marriage system in which they are denied freedom. Esperanza eludes oppression by staying a kid in the Monkey Garden as long as she can. However when the Monkey Garden loses its purity, Esperanza too loses her innocence. Cisneros uses descriptive imagery to strengthen the reader’s understanding of the inequality suffered by women everywhere.