The House on Mango Street is a book written from the perspective of a young child, Esparanza. This girl views her life in an extremely poetic fashion; she explains almost everything in a manner that is very decorated and distant from normal speech. Each chapter consists of a different aspect or event pertaining to Esparanza’s life. She concerns herself with things that seem trivial or simply unimportant. An example of her seemingly pointless rambling is the chapter titled “Hairs.” In this chapter, she explains the hair of each person in her family using an overabundance of similes. She puts much effort into building the greatness of her mother’s hair by comparing it to the smell of freshly baked bread and to little rosettes. Esparanza seems to be an unhappy little girl to say the least. She wishes to have a different name, have a different home, eat lunch at school rather than go home to eat, etc. When she speaks of her name, Esparanza refers to sadness; she is particularly fond of the idea of changing her name to Zeze the X. By the sound of all her descriptions, she is just very down and without any hope of any substantial dose of happiness. The nuns in her neighborhood and at her school make her feel worthless because of the place she calls home. Two separate times she is asked by a nun to point out her house, and she gets embarrassed and sad each time. When Esparanza points to her home, the first nun we are introduced to responds, “You live there?” A comment such as that would kill the pride of most people, especially a young girl whom is already ashamed of her house. She has no hope of a better life regardless of the fact that her parents repeatedly speak optimistically of moving to a picture perfect house to call home. Esparanza is also easily amused; she got jollies from taking a ride in a car, and running around is someone’s old high-heeled shoes. She leads a life with ...
