Essay on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

"I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free." (Cisneros 110) Esperanza wants to be set free from the life she lives on Mango Street. In her book her choice of words displays emotion and conviction that she will indeed one day be free of her life there. On the last page of her book "House On Mango Street" she sets up a summary of not only why she must leave but also why she will return.

On page 106 Esperanza points out to her friend Alicia why she does not have a house. Her friend listens in sadness for her reasons why she does not belong to Mango Street. "You live right here, 4006 Mango, Alicia says and points to the house that I am ashamed of" (Cisneros 106). Esperanza replied as she shook her head that she doesn't belong and she never wants to be from Mango Street. But then she is reminded that she must return because who besides her is going to make it better (Cisneros 107).

Esperanza likens her life on Mango to the lives of the four elm trees that are planted by the curb. "They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them" (Cisneros 74). "Four who do not belong here but are here." I believe she uses this metaphoric language of the trees existence to explain in vivid imagery her feelings towards life on Mango Street. She says that they "bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep." I believe she reasons her hope in these trees. Especially in the passage "Four who reach and do not forget to reach" (Cisneros 75). She says that they grow despite the concrete. I believe that she is only here to be and be like those trees and that she is growing and reaching, in the way that grows like the trees and doesn't stop reaching for the sky.

Esperanza means hope. The fact that her name is Esperanza leads us to believe that her family has hope in her. It was her Great-grandmothers name who was a wild horse of a woman" (Cisneros 11). However her Great-grandmother was married against her will and never got to do the all the things she intended. Esperanza does not want to inherit the same place by the window. I think she feels that she has hope, and that she will eventually leave Mango.
Although she knows that she will have to return "For the ones who cannot out" (Cisneros 110), and even though she is ashamed of Mango Street and is angry for the life she leads there, she knows that she will return there to come back for the ones she left behind. For those she loves that cannot leave themselves. She knows that one day she will walk away with her papers and her shoes and find a house to call her own. But that house will never be Mango Street.
~Sandra Cisneros (1984) The House On Mango Street, 26 November 2004