The House On Mango Street Analysis

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We all must start somewhere, and we can’t choose where. We all must set foot in places where we feel welcomed and in places that we don’t. In places that would seem impossible to reach. To stretch out and barely skim the vast expanse of a place that would seem so illustrious to be a part of but something is keeping you back. An impediment that you would have to overcome in time to pass through the world’s gateway. To become somebody. In the novel The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, an adolescent Chicana girl named Esperanza tells her life’s story through a series of vignettes about growing up in her run-down house on Mango Street in a Latino community in Chicago. However, this is not the house Esperanza dreamed of having…show more content…
For Esperanza, it would be a huge leap in her life, because towards the middle of the novel, she experiences some moments where she feel alone and desires connection. “Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor” (pg.9). Esperanza is held back from being someone important in the world because of not just her lack of friendship but also her “nonexistence” in her society. She must start by being recognized in her community if she wants to be recognized in the world. Cisneros creates a symbolism between Esperanza and a balloon tied to an anchor, which truly strengthens the idea that Esperanza is trying rise up and pull away from her limits, limits that she refuses to accept. To be noticed by her community, she’d need just to release from the anchor. To be noticed by the world, she’d need to rise above the water that the anchor is pulling her into. An anchor suffocating her in an ocean of restraints without any freedom to help her breath. While Rachel and Lucy (Esperanza’s friends) and Nenny (her sister) are standing and looking at a house, Cisneros writes “Look at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico. Rachel and Lucy look at me like I’m crazy, but before they can let out a laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that’s Mexico all right. That’s what I was thinking exactly” (pg.18). This “fuse” between Esperanza and Nenny is what saved Esperanza from being put down by Rachel and Lucy. In other words, companionship is what kept Esperanza glued together even while “facing” some of her closest friends. In this case, it’s as if Rachel and Lucy are society. This should remind Esperanza and all those in their adolescent stages of life that even though you might start to feel less connected
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