The House on Mango Street

I enjoy books that seem real – books that have real-life characters with real-life situations and The House on Mango Street does just that.  From cover to cover, I was easily able to relate to the characters in the story.  I attribute this mostly to the language Sandra Cisneros uses, simple and concise.  This language is not only a nice break from the elegant, over-descriptive writing we have observed, but also a clear way to send a message to readers. The most obvious theme I saw throughout the book was that of entrapment, and I saw it on two separate levels.

 

Esperanza clearly seems to feel trapped by the place she is forced to live during her childhood, and that shows through very well in the language of the stories.   The first level of entrapment is that of class.  In the beginning of the story, we see that Esperanza’s family is not of a lower class.  She immediately expresses her shame over the house they live in, and states that some day she would have her own house, one she “could point to” without being ashamed (5).  Also, early on in the story, we see a decline in the neighborhood’s overall class.  Cathy, a girl living on Mango Street with her family says she has to move away because “people like [Esperanza] keep moving in (13).  Throughout the story, symptoms of a low-class neighborhood continue to pop up with stories of bums asking for kisses from the girls and stories of children like Sally, who is abused by her father.  Ultimately, Esperanza wants to get out and “sleep…close to the stars” in a “house on a hill,” but she claims she will not forget the people of Mango Street.

 

The other level of entrapment I picked up on was that of childhood.  Esperanza seems to be in limbo of childhood and adulthood for most of the story.  In some stories she longs to do grown-up things such as where high-heels, put on make-up like Sally, and have a boy hold her like Sire holds his girlfriend; but in other stories, Esperanza seems reluctant to grow up.  In contradiction to her feelings about Sire and his girlfriend, she is upset when Sally leaves her to kiss the boys in the Monkey Garden.  Also, she seems to talk condescendingly about the girls that get married to early in the story.  These hints of anger and jealousy show conflicting views toward growing up.

 

To me, Mango Street seems to be a symbol of the entrapment Esperanza experiences.  On Mango Street, Esperanza will always feel weighted down, but when she finally leaves, she will be free of poverty and childhood ignorance.  Once she has done this, she can return as she says she will in the end.