The House On Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros

Feeling trapped in something people do not want to be in is never a good feeling, but breaking through that feeling and living their dream is something people will never want to forget. In The House on Mango Street, a novella by Sandra Cisneros takes the readers through Esperanza’s story of growing up in Chicago trying to find out who she is and what she wants to be. She fights for what she wants trying to live out her dream. The circle is an important symbol in The House on Mango Street representing ways that many characters are trapped in a cycle of violence and poverty as well as the ways a community can help break that cycle.
The circle is shown multiple ways throughout the novella as Esperanza goes through many situations. An example early in Esperanza’s life is her aunt. When her aunt was very sick she read a poem that Esperanza wrote herself. The author writes “I want to be like the waves on the sea, like the clouds in the wind, but I am me” (Cisneros 60). In this poem Esperanza knocks herself down and conveying that she will never be free from her old life. Esperanza wants to drift away to a life she wants but believes that she can not get out of the circle she …show more content…
For Example on of Esperanza’s neighbors Rafaela married young and lives with her husband. Cisneros writes “She gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid she’ll run away since she is too beautiful to look at” (79). Rafaela’s husband is scared because he is afraid she is going to run away. Instead of being locked up because of her beauty Cisneros has the readers feel like that is not the real reason. She is not locked up because of her beauty but because of the things her husband does to her. But since Esperanza is young at this point she does not fully understand . The violence in the circle is another way to show how characters in the story feel like they are trapped in this life and can not get