Esperanza's Coming of Age in 'The House on Mango Street'

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Nate Ackerman Mrs. Saunders AP literature 02/20/15 A Perfect House Everyone wants a house. Everyone wants four walls, a furnace, and a kitchen to call his.her own. In the short novel "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros Esperanza has this, she but is wanting more, striving for something better, something she can call her own, a house that "Would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence." (Page 4) Esperanza doesn't realize that what she is so desperately looking for isn't a tangible house but a figurative house that is found in her heart and has rooms for her family and heritage. Esperanza idolizes a house because of what her parents have told it would be like to live in one. A house is a home free of landlords, has its own stairs and 3 bathrooms. At the beginning of the book Esperanza expresses how she covets for a house of her own. Esperanza talks about how life would be with a house she could brag about because of her experiences with a nun asking where she lives and she is too embarrassed when she tells him. She doesn't want that feeling and that's why she so desperately wants to move into a nicer house.She is an immature girl at first but later on throughout the novel she realizes the importance of family and heritage and completely changes her views on life. Esperanza first starts switching her views on what kind of house she wants in the short vignettes "bums in the attic." This vignette starts of with Esperanza's childish views of a house when she says "I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where papa work." (Page 86) But as the vignette gets to a close she says something very meaningful and thoughtful. "One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, came I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to
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