Character Sketch (Esperanza)

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Josephine Williams 10/6/11 Literature Essay Character Sketch (Esperanza) As Esperanza matures during the year, she experiences a series of awakenings, the most important being a sexual awakening. In the beginning of the novel, Esperanza was not ready to emerge from the asexuality of childhood. She was completely ignorant about sex and said that boys and girls lived in completely different worlds. Esperanza was a Latina and was so much of a child that she cannot speak to her brothers outside the house. When she became an adolescent, she began to experiment with the power she, as a young woman, has over men. Marin taught Esperanza fundamental facts about boys, but the first major step in Esperanza’s awareness of her sexuality was when she and her friends explored Mango Street in high-heeled shoes. She then realized the power of the shoes gave her, the idea that physical beauty helped her escape the squalor of her surroundings. Esperanza quickly learned, that the patriarchal society which she lives denies the power of female sexuality. The bum who attempted to kiss Rachel was one of the first in a series of men who used force to take what girls don’t want to give freely. After being sexually assaulted at her first job by an elderly man, Esperanza tries to forget some of what she learned about sex in the past year in order to focus on writing. At the end of the novel, Esperanza’s view on sex evolved, and she rejects sex as a mean of escape. Esperanza’s moral sense develops from an intense individualism to a feeling of responsibility toward the people in her community. As a child, Esperanza wanted to escape mango Street. Her dreams of self-definition do not include the fact that she has any responsibility to her family or to the people around her, and she also wishes to leave all

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