Esperanza, the following episode

   In the final four vignettes of the House on Mango Street, Sandra shows Esperanza's hope to leave Mango street and possibly returning for the ones she "left behind". In the final four vignettes, Esperanza encounters visitors of the house who seemed to possess some uniqueness in them. The third to last of the four vignettes, Alicia points to Esperanza's house, she is too ashamed to admit she lives there.In the second to last of the four vignettes, Esperanza dreams of a house on her own, with her own independence and privacy. The last and final vignette, Esperanza believes she can break free from the gloomy house on Mango Street and come back for the ones she left behind, who cannot leave on their own.
   In these final vignettes, visitors viewed the house and asked Esperanza to make a wish, "Yes, make a wish. What do you want? Anything? I said. Well, why not? I closed my eyes...Along silence. When you leave you must remember always to come back, she said."(pg 104.) The visitors can predict Esperanza's wish was to leave after viewing the house. They can tell Esperanza wants to leave and shows this by telling her to come back when she does. These final vignettes show how much Esperanza wants to leave her shameful house. "You live right here, 4006 Mango, Alicia says and points to the house I am ashamed of. No, this isn't my house i say... I don't belong."(pg 106) This shows how strong Esperanza's feelings are to break free from this Mango Street house because she never wants to look at it nor come from it. This house is viewed to her as not a real house. Esperanza begins to vision her new house, "A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias."(pg 108) She has always wanted these visions to become true with her own privacy. In her future, she will live in her own house by herself raising flowers. This vision of a private house makes it seem as if she wants to live alone without anyone to poke at her. The wish, visions and shamefulness toward the house all lead up to her wanting to leave. When she finally leaves, she may become a storyteller or writer. She explains she likes to tell stories and with the life she had, she would love to. Her future of storytelling comes from the life she had moving from house to house and landing on a sad Many Street house. I do not think she will come back for the ones she left behind because she says "I don't ever want to come from here...but me I never had a house.."(pg 107) From this quote, she doesn't see her house as a house nor does she ever want to go back to it. By going back to the house, she will have to come from it.
   The last four vignettes express Esperanza's shamefulness toward her "house" on Mango Street and visions and wishes to finally leave and possibly get a storytelling related job in the future.

Raising boys and girls

   In the book of a series of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros is about a young girl Esperanza Cordero who faces many difficulties in her life as she comes to learn how she can achieve in the future. Written by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza is raised in Chicago, the Latino rundown neighborhood section. Esperanza had many difficulties and obstacles she needed to overcome in order to pursue her life out of Mango Street.While facing these difficulties, Sandra Cisneros portrays a difference in the way children should be raised based on their gender. In some vignettes, boys are showed to be raised as stronger and more independent. This freedom allows the boys to go outside and do what they want. In some vignettes, as well, girls are showed to be under the grasp of parents without as much freedom. In Sandra Cisneros's view, boys do not have the safety that girls have when they are young and are vulnerable to more trouble. The freedom that boys have allow parents to not worry about them as much, but worry about the girls future. Girls are more worried about and can get into trouble more easily. It is shown raising a girl requires more spy activity and focus on the people around you. On page 41, as Rachel, Lucy, and Esperanza are "tee-tottering" down the corner while men are watching,

"Mr. Benny at the corner grocery puts down his important cigar: Your mother know you got shoes like that?  Who give you those? Nobody. Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before i call the cops, but we just run."

 This shows how some people in their neighborhood pay attention to girls more. Depending on how they pay attention, boys with glued eyes and Mr. Benny with criticism of their shoes, girls lean on to be raised with a much harder life. Girls are raised to not have the bad look and are always watched.
  Boys on the other hand have more freedom but are sometimes protected when it comes to interaction with girls in the outside world. Esperanza describes the boy's world as, "They've got plenty to say to me and Nenny inside the house. But outside the house they can't be seen talking to girls."(pg 8) This shows how boys are allowed to talk to their sisters, in the house, but cannot talk to other girls, outside of the house. They can't be seen with girls, meaning the parents are being protective and preventing their boys from having that interaction with other girls.
Thus, the differences between boy and girl vary on the type of protection they receive, some receive more from more people, some receive more from their family.

Avoiding Fears

1. Tall Wood
2. The Word
3. 5 Broken Pencils
4. As opposed to dark
5. Hairs

Tall Wood

Walking down the road surrounded by nature all the time, I didn’t appreciate what nature did. As I looked for my mom in the football field parking lot, I kept an open eye for everything around me, just in case she appears. I looked everywhere while standing in place and saw expensive cars, shopping bags, and parents of others. I saw trash cans, pillow clouds, and trees like dinosaurs. These trash cans were full of trash and even recyclable material. The fluffy clouds looked like they were moving across the blue ocean sky. The humongous trees rose up from their roots far in the ground. The trees had bright green leaves. I waited for my mom to come out of the store. Whenever I felt like panicking, I stared at the trees and took deep breaths like running from a bear. The trees waved at me as the wind blew and leaves lightly lifted away from the branch into my hand. The thought of mom coming back was carved onto the bark of the tree. Every time this bark chipped off or was chipped off, I lost the image.

I never appreciated trees. My basic description of a tree was wood, that, like plants, produce oxygen. When I looked at the trees this time, I saw a huge body of life. The tree had many friends. He was surrounded by many other trees. They surrounded the perimeter of the parking lot and kept everything that belonged in, in. The tree was a permeable border, it let people come in and let people out. Without the help of my fellow trees, my mom would leave. I knew the trees would not let me down.

The whole time, i played with the trees. I laughed with them, waved with them, and climbed on them. People stared but the trees would fend them off.

I never understood the power of the tree. It brought my mom to me and me to my mom. I stared at the tree as we left. Birds like eagles had occupied it and sneaky squirrels had their eyes on it. It would have company as I left.

   

The Word

When it was time for bad words to finally arrive, it arrived. I was waiting for the word to finally pop up.

School was the last place I thought the word would fall in. With so many teachers watching and so many other students who could snitch. I was watching my classmates take a test like it was brain surgery. They tapped and winked at each other like they were on a secret mission, just taking a test. They never stayed silent during the test even if they were not cheating on the test. I eyed the teacher in the corner of my eye. She looked at me like I was doing something wrong while all the other kids were talking.

When I walked up to turn in my test, she looked at the test then to me before taking it from my hand.

I said, Why can everyone else talk?
She replied, and spoke to the rest of the class, “QUIET”.
Shocked, I walked back slowly to my seat and quietly down without making a noise. I sat with my hands crossed and stared at the clock. The talking continued and one student began throwing balls of paper at another. The other student replied with a sharp pencil thrown back at the first person. It hit the student around the eye area.

He yelled, “OW” and the WORD.

The next thing I noticed was he was gone. After the teacher did not tolerate the language, he left holding his eye and looked ahead for his mom.

After that, the students began to say that word just for fun. I, maybe once or twice, stopped and saved its use for emergencies.

I heard, “Hey...Why, what is one plus one.”

I answered with the word in my mind, “toe.... two sorry.”

In class, HE was back. and calmed down. I laughed at him when he came in and as he sat down, I said his word. He said, It wasn’t funny, my eye hurt when his pencil hit me. Can I borrow a sharpener?

I said no, but that word was what I started to think of.

The thrower began to throw little balls of paper at me, and I asked him to stop. He thought it was funny that the balls bounced off my face, so he kept going and threw a larger one that looked like an orange. I stormed the WORD out and the room froze. This time,  I was on my own, in the dark dreary dull corner because of my disruption. Was the WORD worse than what the thrower did?

5 broken pencils

Tests sucked. Some students liked tests, I did not. They were in it for the grade because it would boost them up. Some students began to care about their grades at an early age. I never understood what they were until the end of sixth grade because I got “3s” on most of my grades. It did not matter as long as my parents would not get mad, they would say, it is OK, but you have to start doing better when you get older. I said, OK, and did not know if i could pull it off.

In class, i sat at my seat and stared at the clock and board as usual. “Put your stuff away and take out just a pencil”. Surprised, I put my papers on my desk away and scooped my hand into my backpack for a pencil. I said, “Hurray”. I felt so many sticks of wood in my backpack and fingered around to lift one up. The ones i lifted were broken in half. One after another, until, I found a pencil tip in my backpack and whipped it out between my fingers. This, I thought, saved me from embarrassment from walking up the classroom and asking the teacher for a pencil. Even with a pencil tip, i was glad.

As opposed to dark.

As opposed to dark, light would always from me happiness. At  night I sleep. At night, I avoid seeing even though it is nearly impossible to see. At night it is like the Earth is a room, and the light is blocked out. I like the sun shining its bright light down instead of the darkness.

In the dark, i would stumble past walls and bang my hip onto the side of the door and fall. I sat there waiting, too scared to move. As I saw the smiling sun rise just a little, I ran to my bed and jumped in. I did not get much sleep, but at least the sun saved me. In the light, i ran like there was no dark after me. The light is where I am alive and not resting away from the darkness.

The one day, I went upstairs on my own, was the only day that I needed to jump into my drawing bed.

Hairs

Everybody in our family has different skin tones. My Papa’s skin is like a cardboard box. It is not too dark nor too light. It is a darker shade of brown. His skin shines in the sun at the pool. It is often rough and thick, sometimes even dry. And me, my skin is light and dark. It doesn’t burn much because I try to avoid the sunlight. His skin is sensitive and easily burnt by the sun. He does need to apply a lot of sunscreen whenever exposed to the sunlight. And the turtle, his skin is scaly.

But my mother’s skin, my mother’s skin, is very pale. She does not expose her skin to the sun. If any method possible, she will try to avoid the sun. It does not ever turn dark because as soon as it becomes red, Mama escapes the sun. It glows in the sun instead of shining. It does not dry easily after washing vegetables. My Papa’s skin is rough and hard. It is the skin of a turtle without the scales. Her skin is soft when she is holding you and easily scratched. The dark skin, the glowing skin, and the hidden skin at the pool, all at once.

Trees symbolize...

In the book The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, it consists of consecutive vignettes all about different things in a person's life. One way of describing her life is by using symbols. The author uses symbols to represent things that are not mentioned first hand. They imply a meaning but that meaning of the symbol is never exposed in the book. It is hidden and for the author to know and for the reader to analyze. One of the many symbols Sandra Cisneros uses is the symbol of trees. In the book, trees symbolize a calm living thing. Trees symbolize the tranquility in her life when there is nothing else to look at. One of many symbols, trees represents the calming life everywhere.
Trees represent something that cheers the main character up. It is when she is feeling down when she looks towards trees. She says on page 75, "When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street." In this quote, Sandra explains that Esparanza looks at trees when she is sad. When she is feeling down about herself, trees are the things that cheer her up. She looks at trees when she can keep keeping. Also when there is nothing left on the street to look forward to, trees can be her plan. Trees are like sites that bring happiness and healing to her pain because she looks at them when she is not feeling good.
Trees symbolize a calm safe feeling because Esparanza describes trees as a good thing. Rows of trees are joy for Esparanza. On page 83, she explains, "There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky." With so much trees and sky, she can have her own privacy and be on her own. There will be not distractions in her life nor noise. Trees are the opposite of distractions and annoying things; they are soothing and relaxing.
Also on the page she says, "Only trees and more  trees and plenty of blue sky. and you could laugh, sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn't like you." (pg 83) Trees are like an alarm. When there are so many trees visible, she can relax. She can do anything she wants without caring about what other people think. This is how the trees bring joy into her life. They serve as peace and harmony. Trees are what allows Esparanza to live her life and not worry about other people's opinions.
Esparanza may look forward to trees as sometimes her life goes down, but trees can do the healing and bring back the peacefulness in her life.

Windows - Symbolism

In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, she displays windows for a symbolic reason in her vignettes. The significance of windows in the book is to symbolize an isolation from the outside world and sadness. The author describes a sense of loneliness and sadness with the window between them and the world. It is the window that causes them to feel differently.
Windows, in the vignette, my name, shows her great grandmother's life of trouble with her grandfather. Her grandmother's life was stolen from her. She says about her grandmother, "She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow." (pg 11) The result of her grandmother's stolen life is sadness. The window is what prevents her from seeing the outside world. The window shows isolation from others and prevents her from achieving what she could have achieved. The window was a barrier that isolated the grandmother from the world. The sadness prevented her from "be all the things she wanted to be."(pg 11) The window served as a barrier to not allow the grandmother to succeed but keep her in place. The window gives the characters a sad life, saying that they look out the window in despair.
In No Speak English, windows are used to show a sad life. It shows that Rachel did not get her name so "She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull.". (pg 77) From a failure, Rachel ends up in despair as well, and wastes her days listening to the radio. The window shows how her life seems so blank and Windows in this, show sadness like the first one. However, the window is the thing that makes her seem sad, because she is so close to the open world but never reaches it.
In the vignette, Rafaela, she is shown as "getting old from leaning out the window so much,"(pg 79)From this quote, Rafaela, leaning on the window, has shown despair with age. She has become older after being on the window so much, even though she is young. The window is the thing that prevents Rafaela from escaping her husband's grasp. She, "leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel's. (pg 79) She is dreaming of escaping, however, the locked window prevents her from getting out. It is the barrier between her, and the world outside of her house.
From all three vignettes, grandmother, Rachel, and Rafaela's stare and connection to the window does not allow them to reach their full potentials in life. Rather, it keeps them isolated from the outside world. Windows represent the barrier, and the amount of loneliness they have. It is windows that can symbolize how the outcomes of their life have become and their dreams for hope.