...Why Minerva Opens the Door for Her Husband The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel about escape and identity for many characters, including Minerva, a poet. As Esperanza grows up on Mango Street, she meets many potential role models. From Rafaela to Mamacita, many of the women on Mango Street are waiting by windows. One of them is Minerva, who writes poems, a teenager trapped in an abusive relationship, with kids and her own guilt stopping her from fighting back. She writes poems to provide a semblance of freedom to herself, but never actually believes in her ability to leave. Because Minerva’s only escape from her abusive husband is inside her head, she lacks the self-efficacy she needs to break free. Minerva has only one...
Words: 614 - Pages: 3
...The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is full of excellent literary techniques, a prime example of this is the chapter My Name. The first example of this is Cisneros use of juxtaposition. While discussing her great-grandmother’s attitude and their similarities, which include their Chinese zodiac sign, Esperanza compares Chinese and Mexican culture, “the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.” The author does this to make the passage more interesting and easier for the reader to understand. This is highly effective because it shows the negative attitude towards women that Esperanza relates to. The second instance of the use of literary techniques is the use of symbolism. Esperanza’s great-grandmother was stuck in an unhappy marriage and “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” This use of symbolism makes the work much more interesting than if she had just that her...
Words: 365 - Pages: 2
...Sandra Cisneros’ novel, The House on Mango Street, is about Esperanza Cordero and her experiences growing up in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Esperanza is a young girl whose family has moved frequently. She observes the different families that live around her and their problems. She does not feel that she belongs in this neighborhood and yearns for a home of her own. Her parents, her, and her three siblings all sleep in one room. The families around her are poor and many of her neighbors dream of a better life. Her mother consistently tells her that when they win the lottery things will change. She tells Esperanza that education is important and, from her own experience, not to let pride stop her from completing school. Esperanza dreams...
Words: 1919 - Pages: 8
...The House on Mango Street is a coming of age story about a young Mexican-American girl named Esperanza, who struggles to figure out who her real self is. Such as, self-definition, ethnicity, language, and economic status. All these factors play a role in which she learns that what defines her is her ability to tell stories. Her writing allows her to express those aspects of her life and allow her to step out of her comfort zone about her background and how she feels towards defining herself. A common theme in House on Mango Street is the struggle of identity. Esperanza has to define herself both as a woman and as an artist, which changes throughout the novel. In the beginning of the novel Esperanza wants to separate herself from her family and heritage by changing...
Words: 1495 - Pages: 6
...what shapes people and it can be anything from looks to traits. The House On Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is about a girl named Esperanza and her journey through life. Esperanza desperately wants to move off the street she lives on and in doing so she realizes many things about herself as well as who she is as a person. Identity is the most important theme in the novel because Esperanza’s identity change s, identity shapes who she is, and Esperanza discovers her cultural identity. The first reason why identity is the most important theme is because Esperanza’s identity changes. Alicia states, “ Like it or not you are Mango Street, and one day you will come back too,” (Page 107). Esperanza responds with, “ Not me,” (Page...
Words: 542 - Pages: 3
...The House on Mango Street follows the story of Esperanza, a girl growing up in a poor Hispanic family and how she was influenced by her neighborhood and the people around her. The characters fulfill certain stereotypes that would normally be applied to them, but Sandra Cisneros dispels them by portraying how they actually live through the eyes of a girl growing up in the culture. In the novella, power imbalances between races are shown through the stereotyping and neighborhood divides in the city that Esperanza grew up in, which shows how stereotypes can become so normalized that they are treated as a regular characteristic of someone of a certain group. Esperanza has had an understanding of the way her Hispanic ethnicity is viewed by society, more specifically, upper-class white society. The scale of these stereotypes against Esperanza is shown when she talks...
Words: 965 - Pages: 4
...Too Much Independence? In “The House on Mango Street”, by Sandra Cisneros, the character Esperanza shows little to no acknowledgement or appreciation of her parents, she wants to be more independent and defines herself as “separate” from her parents. Many people would agree that, from the child to teenage years is when kids start to want to have the initiative to want to be independent, and start to do things on your own. Esperanza distances herself in this story from her house both physically and mentally by spending most of her time outdoors and denying that she belongs in the house and neighborhood. Along with this, Esperanza distanced herself from her parents. In doing this she shows her little appreciation she has for her parents, compared to how the other neighborhood kids (around her age) parents treat them. This is seen a lot in today’s society as well, because as more kids want their independence they seem to appreciate their parents less. Esperanza’s views on the topic is that independence is something that everyone wants the question remains is as to what extent can independence be good when a person wants little to no...
Words: 1444 - Pages: 6
...they are being subjected to this role out of innocence and ignorance of knowing nothing else. As girls grow into women who grow into mothers who grow into grandmothers their purpose in life is laid out to them by men within a predetermined role made up of the oppressed domestic housewife. This role often constitutes the women to be a submissive creature to the male figures in her life. This assembly line of sorts makes it easy for these women to never question why this is all that can be given to them. Why do they accept this domestic submissive role? Do they realize that this role is holding them back or have they just learned to accept the role? Within this essay I will be looking at this mass production of submissive roles produced by men, specifically I will be analyzing the coming of age novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Within this novel the main character Esperanza Cordero moves from the country side of Mexico to an urban city in America in search of the American dream. She makes this move with her family when she is a young girl and as she...
Words: 1049 - Pages: 5
...There are many people who don’t like the current situation their in. Whether it’s where they live or how their living their life. In the novella, “The House on Mango Street,” the view is shown through Esperanza, in many different vignettes about her neighborhood, some good, and some bad. Both Alicia and Esperanza view education and writing as a way to a better life. Through these and other characters, Cisneros suggests that education offers a path of freedom. Many people would agree that a good education will lead you to path of freedom and success. In many instances, Cisneros talks about getting an education, and how it will get Esperanza out of Mango Street. In the vignette, “Alicia who sees Mice,” Cisneros writes, “ she doesn’t want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin” (Cisneros 32). This shows that like everyone else, Alicia wants to leave Mango Street as soon as possible. Alicia realizes that the only way she can do that is if she gets a good education. She studies hard, and yearns for the days away from Mango Street....
Words: 530 - Pages: 3
...Comparative Essay: gender roles in The House on Mango Street and Annie John Question 3: To what extent do male and female literary characters accurately reflect the role of men and women in society? In this essay I will analyse to what extent the characters in the novels The House on Mango Street (text A), by Sandra Cisneros, and Annie John (text B), by Jamaica Kincaid, reflect the role of men and women in society. These two novels criticise patriarchal societies, where “women are taught to think as men, identify with a male point of view and to accept as normal and legitimate a male system of values…” . In both of them, there are clear examples of chauvinism, which conditions the lives of Esperanza Cordero, a “Chicana” who lives in a Latin neighbourhood in the USA called Mango Street; and Annie John, who passes her childhood and part of her adolescence in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean which until 1981 was a British colony. In the following paragraphs, I will describe and analyse diverse illustrations of patriarchal society seen in both novels. These examples will be used to explain male and female roles in this kind of society. Firstly, both societies are more permissive with men than with women. In this way, males are allowed to act freely, while women are constantly being judged for their actions. In text A, we can notice Rosa Vargas’s situation. As the text says, “she is the only one against so many […] [and] cries everyday for the man who left without even...
Words: 1122 - Pages: 5
...readings to compare and contrast in your final essay. Additionally, develop three possible topics for your paper, which your instructor will review for approval. Lastly, list and describe three to five sources that you will use to write your essay. |Literature |Title: Everyday Uses | |Selection One |Author: Alice Walker | | |Why I Chose This Piece: I chose this because of the symbolism it uses on the values placed on old quilts. | |Literature |Title: The House on Mango Street | |Selection Two |Author: Sandra Cisneros | | |Why I Chose This Piece: It emphasizes the symbolization on the emotions that Esperanza feels about her life circumstances. | |Topics |Primary Topic: Find the different symbolism and compare them between the quilts and the house. ...
Words: 256 - Pages: 2
...Simon Adelle UCOR 102 Paper 3 Professor Marcum Making It in A Man’s World April 29, 2013 “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros exposes the life of the main character, Esperanza, for one year as she struggles with trying to find her place in America as a Chicana young girl while also coming of age. The novel starts the day Esperanza and her family of six move into a house on Mango Street, and immediately she expresses her antipathy for not only the house, but also for the area in which they move into and the people around who judge them because of their ethnicity. The story is not told in the traditional format of a continuous story divided into chapters, but rather Cisneros uses forty-four vignettes to allow for the reader to fully understand why Esperanza has the struggles that she has. Along with Cisneros’ illustrating Esperanza’s looking for her identity through images of Esperanza’s thoughts and female obedience, symbolism of violence, legs, the Statue for Liberty, and Nenny, and diction of Spanish words, not using quotation marks, and a maturing tone, she also uses these them to permeate Esperanza’s desperation to leave Mango Street throughout the whole novel. Cisneros’ use of vignettes highlights important moments in Esperanza’s life that emphasize how she develops over the course of a year. Cisneros uses the brevity of the vignettes to enhance the imagery to give the most vivid image through her limited amount of words for...
Words: 3794 - Pages: 16
...Content: In terms of content, this essay does not seem to fully adhere to the essay prompt. Remember that we are required to find a major theme that relates “The House On Mango Street” to your own life. Make sure to begin incorporating your own life experiences to your essay before you run out of time. Furthermore, your essay also contains several MLA formatting errors that must be addressed, so make sure to review the formatting requirement for MLA. Organization: The organization of your essay requires several corrections to ensure it is adequately organized. The first problem I noted was that you need to complete your opening paragraph of your essay, which is a critical component of any essay. Additionally, your thesis statement and...
Words: 394 - Pages: 2
...SIOP® LESSON PLANS Grade 9/SIFE Reading/Language Arts/Writing Unit/Theme: Emotions and The House on Mango Street *Content Objective(s): *Students will describe Cisneros’ voice and style, listing some of her creative uses of language as characteristic of this author’s craft*Students will explore the physical and emotional prisons in which people live. *Students will discover and evaluate different methods of escape from these prisons. *Students will practice writing in the persuasive mode, using evidence from the text and from their own lives to construct effective arguments proposing the best way to escape the troubles of life*Students will peer edit and revise for content, for sentence structure, and for use of figurative language. *Language Objective(s): *Students will continue to build vocabulary resources for discussing emotions. *Students will identify fragmentary sentence structure, voice, and effective use of figurative language in Cisneros’ style and use knowledge of style to develop originality in their own writing style. *Student will be able to participate in and contribute to collaborative learning, such as “think, pair, share” and “expert groups.” Key Vocabulary: prison, escape, safe haven, voice, style, figurative language, persuasive mode, context, concept map, anticipatory set, peer editing, rubric, tapping prior knowledge, description, sensory detail, quotation, five senses, , sentence fragments, “unacceptable in academic writing,” punctuation,...
Words: 2737 - Pages: 11
...Hispanic and Latino Spiritual Paper ENG/301 December 14, 2015 Hispanic and Latino Spiritual Paper I have a better comprehension and appreciation of the Hispanic and Latino culture, after reading the material this week. This culture has their way of communicating with one another. Within the Hispanic and Latino cultures we repeatedly see magic, religion, faith and tradition play big parts in their lives. In this essay, I will discuss four of the stories that I feel show how these elements play a part in their day to day lives. I have chosen four pieces, “Curving Woman,” by Alejandro Morales, “Seven Long Times,” by Piri Thomas, “Tales Told under the Mango Tree, “ by Judith Ortiz Cofer and last but not least, “The Kite,” by Ed Vega. Religion, Faith, Tradition, and Magic As I stated the Hispanic and Latino cultures rely on religion, faith, traditions and magic. I saw this in the writing, “The Curing Woman” by Alejandro Morales. This story is about Mr.Benidorm, the man of the house, impregnated a servant, and had a daughter. Once the servant's time had been served, she requested to take her daughter, Marcelina, with her. Mrs.Benidorm refused the Marcelina to go with her mother. “She had grown to love Marcelina and besides, the child was a reminder to her husband of his sins of infidelity.” (Morales, 1986). This nine-year-old girl spent the next four years with Mr. and Mrs. Benidorm and never seeing her mother during this time. Then at thirteen years...
Words: 1369 - Pages: 6
