The House on Mango Street

1.The House on Mango Street is about a young girl named Esperanza who has moved with her family into a house on Mango Street. The family is of Mexican heritage and struggles economically. Esperanza does not understand her family struggles and ultimately resists the move. The time span of the novel was her first year living on Mango Street, and Esperanza speaks nothing but negative things to the town, house, and people living on the street. Within that year it is seen Esperanza making new friends, Rachel and Lucy, whom she always fights with yet can not separate from. Within the novel it is seen Esperanza ultimately maturing into a young lady. Her feelings of the move has not changed, but ultimately finds other things to think about. She  fantasizes about boys and discusses leaving the town to find love. Esperanza finds a friend named Sally whom has the same wishes. With influence from Sally, Esperanza begins to feel neglected by her family and wants to leave Mango Street more than ever before.  As the time came, Esperanza feels that it's time for her to leave home on Mango Street but she just can not bring herself to do so. She looks to writing as an escape. She writes to avoid the truth that she'll never be able to leave Mango Street.
  2. The theme of the novel is the fight between physical and mental decisions. Throughout the novel Esperanza wants to grow up and be like the other older kids she observes on Mango Street. Though she does not want to live there she wants what the other kids have. Esperanza fight the physical decision to leave Mango Street. When the time came for her to do so, sh couldn't follow through. From the beginning Esperanza wished to leave and make a life of her own away from Mango Street. She comes to the conclusion that she is physically and mentally unable without he family.

• 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. (3.4)

• When I am to sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. […] Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be. (29.4)

  3.Sandra Cisneros's tone in the novel is desirable, hopeful and earnest. You see this in the novel when Esperanza hopes to to leave Mango Street, the reasons for it, and how to make it possible. It is made clear that Esperanza dislikes Mango Street and is tired of seeing the families in a wealthier, more comfortable lifestyle than her.
  4.Sandra Cisneros's uses various literary elements, being personification, similes, allusions, and hyperbole.

• "Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke. The boys at school think she's beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulders and laughs"

•  " They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger."

• "The kids bend trees and bounce between cars and dangle upside down from knees and almost break like fancy museum vases you can't replace."