The House On Mango Street Research Paper

Words: 752
Pages: 4

Benjamin Larsson 3/27/24 Period 5

How Society and Community Shape Esperanza in The House On Mango Street.

Where is your real home? Esperanza doesn’t know where her home is now, but she knows what she wants it to be. “Not a flat” – a slam. Not an apartment in the back. Not a man’s house, but a house. Not a daddy’s house, he said. A house all my own” (Cisneros 108). Esperanza has moved to several different houses throughout her life, but she has never really felt at home. She is ashamed of where she lives because it shows her poverty, and she feels like she doesn’t belong in her family. “You live there” – Is that right? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I am a naysayer. I lived there” (Cisneros 5). Esperanza shows that she longs for a home by talking about how Alicia has a true home to go back to, even if she can’t go back yet. “One day she will go back there. But today she is listening to my sadness because I don’t have a house” (Cisneros 106). The people on Mango Street hold Esperanza back and make her long for independence and freedom from society’s rules that tell her who she is.
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Esperanza feels like Nenny is an anchor while she is “a balloon tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 9). She is trying to rise up and be better, but she is being held down, and she needs to take care of Nenny when she doesn’t want to. She feels distanced from her family and doesn’t need their help in life, but they are keeping her in the role she is expected to be in. Sally is a bad influence on Esperanza, introducing her to untrustworthy people, even when Esperanza knows something is wrong and that Sally abandoned her. Everyone in Esperanza’s family has different kinds of hair as mentioned in the vignette ‘Hairs,’ showing that they don’t really feel connected as a family and that they all need to go their separate ways, but are being forced together by their need for a house and because there are