Character Analysis: The House On Mango Street

Cisneros’s “The House on Mango Street” shows a young girl named esperanza grow up. Esperanza grows up isolated from what she really wants to achieve with her life. Her identity changes over time as she experiences different situations and challenges. She is unsure of her true identity, she travels through her life feeling different ways and overcoming obstacles, like poverty, sexism. As she gets older she finds parts of her true identity and learns more about who she truly wants to be.

Esperanza faces poverty in many ways but, when it comes to how people see her she is largely influenced. The chapter “Chancles” captures this perfectly. Esperanza goes to a party with new everything except shoes. When she got the the party she felt embarrassed that she didn’t have nice shoes. “My feet scuffed and round, …show more content…
In the chapter “The First Job” she gets a job. She is scared, and at one point when her co workers stood up she did the same. She is frightened, if feels as she would rather follow in the footsteps of others than do it herself. “When lunchtime came I was scared to eat in the lunchroom with all those men and ladies looking.” she doesn’t want to be seen, she is unable to see herself meeting new people and talking to them as friends. After that a man comes up to her ands says that she can sit with him at lunch. That washes her unease away. He says that it's her birthday and could she give him a kiss. She is happy that she has someone to sit with, she doesn’t understand what's going on. “He grabs my face with both both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn’t let go.” she has to watch for things like sexism because if she is not careful and get to happy she will let her guard down. She does things that most people won’t like get a job and function normally in a neighborhood that people look down upon. She is prone to more attacks because people will use her thinking she is lesser than