Esperanza My Name

From the section “My Name” the reader learns the main character’s name, Esperanza, for the first time, as she characterizes her name. She explains that her name comes from her great-grandmother and namesake, Esperanza. Esperanza describes her grandmother by saying, “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” Her great-grandmother is the first of many women in the novella who spend their lives looking out the window, longing for escape. Esperanza intends to not end up like her great-grandmother. …show more content…
Some of these women are stuck in these situations because of their husbands, but Esperanza implies that some of them could do more to change their situations and wonders if her great-grandmother made the best of her situation, or if she turned her anger toward her husband inward, and caused more hurt to herself than her husband could have. Though Esperanza asks this question once, she does not apply it to any of the other women she meets. She displays empathy and pity as she understands their situations better than the story of her great-grandmother, whom she never met. She explains her distaste with her given name by saying, “In English my name means hope. In Spanish, it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.” However, what she says here about the word “Esperanza” is not true; in Spanish, the word means “hope.” When Esperanza says, her name means “waiting,” she has taken the Spanish verb “esperar” which means “to expect or wait.” As a student in an American school, Esperanza is frustrated by the difficulty people have with her name, which also sets her apart from