What is the overall theme of The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros?

Question

Not just of each viggnette, but how they are tied together to form one big theme of the whole book. What is it?

Answer 1

Read through this:

http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/lessonplans/mango_street2/index.htm

Answer 2

Woman Hollering Creek Themes

Answer 3

Umm, just how many times are you going to ask this question? I've already answered it twice.

Answer 4

go to sparknotes.com - it is a great website for literature & other subjects - my kids use it all the time.

Answer 5

being gay duh

Answer 6

"Sandra Cisneros constructs her work through a series of vignettes. A vignette is a short, well written sketch or descriptive scene. It does not have a plot which would make it a story, but it does reveal something about elements in it. It may reveal character, or mood or tone. It may have a theme or idea of its own that it wants to convey. It is the description of the scene or character that is important. By linking these vignettes, Cisneros attempts to reveal the life of a young girl, a daughter of Mexican immigrants, growing up in the inner city of the United States. When all of the vignettes are told, the reader gets a larger picture of the narrator, Esperanza, and the culture from which she springs."
The problem with teaching English is that the subject just doesn't get any respect. Not like the other subjects in the courses of study. Look, take science. If you want to start with science, you take Earth Science and then maybe you move on to Biology and then Chemistry and then Physics and then they start combining things with Biochemistry and such. These must be important subjects because they even have important names, don't they? And how about mathematics? Sure you start with addition and subtraction and then multiplication and division, fractions, decimals, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I don't even know what trigonometry and calculus are, so I'm impressed, aren't you? They must be hard subjects if they have names that you don't even understand. They must be important and you must be smart to master them. Isn't that logical? Then what about English?

English has set itself up to get no respect. First you learn your letters and then how to read and learn how to write. When you get to high school you take English I and then English II and then English III and finally you cap it off with English IV. It's the same stuff, right? What's the difference between English I and English II? Longer books. The essays are longer. You learn more vocabulary words that no one you know uses. Isn't that what most people think? Let me set you straight.

First, you are not done learning how to read. You have a long way to go. I know this because I know that people have been sending you messages and you have not been getting them. They have been flying over your head and you have been assuming that because you got some of the message, you received all of it. You are mightily wrong on this point. Let me illustrate:

I want you to think of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I will give you a few reminders, but I will not tell you the story.

Little Red Riding Hood's mother packs her some goodies to take to grandmother's house.

She starts on her way.

She meets the wolf.

She tells the wolf of her destination and purpose.

She is told of a shortcut.

The wolf goes to the house and takes care of the grandmother and replaces her.

Little Red Riding Hood is saved by a woodsman.

What messages were being sent to you? Did you get all of them? Let me point out a few by asking a few questions.

What is Little Red Riding Hood's name?

About how old would you say she is?

Who would send a little girl out into the woods with wolves?

What sex is the wolf?

Is the wolf young or mature? (Don't tell me the story doesn't say. You know the answer.)

Who saves Little Red Riding Hood?

In this story, which sex is active and which sex is passive?

Why is the dominant color red?

No, I am not going to tell you the answers to any of these questions. That would spoil the fun. But you are thinking about the story now, aren't you? What do you think the wolf represents? What do you think the path through the woods represents? What do you think the shortcut is all about? (You are delving into symbolism now. Be careful. You don't want to start sounding like an English teacher.) Why do you think the women can't save themselves? What is the story telling young children? Do you agree with the message? All of the answers and discussion that spring up because of the story and the questions asked deal with theme. Theme is what the story is about.

This is just a small example of what the study of English is all about. Writers send messages. Cultures send messages. Advertisers send messages. Your girlfriend sends messages. Everybody sends messages. Intelligent and sophisticated people send messages and they are not hidden messages. They are messages that they expect other intelligent and sophisticated people to understand. Starting to feel challenged yet? You should. Remember, Little Red Riding Hood was just a children's fable. Wait until you get to the adult stuff. Understanding life, its meaning, and one's relationship to the universe is a big deal. And that's just in English I.

Cisneros is sending you a message about what it is like for people growing up in the world. Sometimes she wants to narrow some of the ideas down to a specific culture and a specific type of person, but she also wants you to see that much of what she wants to show you is universal. She wants you to see some of yourself in this book. To understand the lives of others is to gain understanding of one's own life."

"The Power of Language
Throughout The House on Mango Street, particularly in “No Speak English,” those who are not able to communicate effectively (or at all) are relegated to the bottom levels of society. Mamacita moves to the country to be with her husband, and she becomes a prisoner of her apartment because she does not speak English. She misses home and listens to the Spanish radio station, and she is distraught when her baby begins learning English words. His new language excludes her. Similarly, Esperanza’s father could not even choose what he ate when he first moved to the country, because he did not know the words for any of the foods but ham and eggs. Esperanza’s mother may be a native English speaker, but her letter to the nuns at Esperanza’s school is unconvincing to them in part because it is poorly written.


Esperanza observes the people around her and realizes that if not knowing or not mastering the language creates powerlessness, then having the ability to manipulate language will give her power. She wants to change her name so that she can have power over her own destiny. Her Aunt Lupe tells her to keep writing because it will keep her free, and Esperanza eventually understands what her aunt means. Writing keeps Esperanza spiritually free, because putting her experiences into words gives her power over them. If she can use beautiful language to write about a terrible experience, then the experience seems less awful. Esperanza’s spiritual freedom may eventually give her the power to be literally free as well.
The Struggle for Self-Definition
The struggle for self-definition is a common theme in a coming-of-age novel, or bildungsroman, and in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s struggle to define herself underscores her every action and encounter. Esperanza must define herself both as a woman and as an artist, and her perception of her identity changes over the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel Esperanza wants to change her name so that she can define herself on her own terms, instead of accepting a name that expresses her family heritage. She wants to separate herself from her parents and her younger sister in order to create her own life, and changing her name seems to her an important step in that direction. Later, after she becomes more sexually aware, Esperanza would like to be “beautiful and cruel” so men will like her but not hurt her, and she pursues that goal by becoming friends with Sally. After she is assaulted, she doesn’t want to define herself as “beautiful and cruel” anymore, and she is, once again, unsure of who she is.
Eventually, Esperanza decides she does not need to set herself apart from the others in her neighborhood or her family heritage by changing her name, and she stops forcing herself to develop sexually, which she isn’t fully ready for. She accepts her place in her community and decides that the most important way she can define herself is as a writer. As a writer, she observes and interacts with the world in a way that sets her apart from non-writers, giving her the legitimate new identity she’s been searching for. Writing promises to help her leave Mango Street emotionally, and possibly physically as well.
Sexuality vs. Autonomy
In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza’s goals are clear: she wants to escape her neighborhood and live in a house of her own. These ambitions are always in her mind, but as she begins to mature, the desire for men appears in her thoughts as well. At first, the desire to escape and the desire for men don’t seem mutually exclusive, but as Esperanza observes other women in the neighborhood and the marriages that bind them, she begins to doubt that she can pursue both. Most of the women Esperanza meets are either trapped in marriages that keep them on Mango Street or tied down by their children. Esperanza decides she does not want to be like these women, but her dire observations of married life do not erase her sexual yearnings for neighborhood boys.
Esperanza decides she’ll combine sexuality with autonomy by being “beautiful and cruel” like Sally and the women in movies. However, Esperanza finds out that being “beautiful and cruel” is impossible in her male-dominated society when she experiences sexual assault. In her dreams about being with Sire, Esperanza is always in control, but in her encounter with the boys who assault her, she has no power whatsoever. The assault makes Esperanza realize that achieving true independence won’t be possible if she pursues relationships with the men in her neighborhood. She puts aside her newfound sexual awareness, rejoins Lucy and Rachel, her less sexually mature friends, and spends her time concentrating on writing instead of on boys. She chooses, for the present, autonomy over sexuality, which gives her the best chance of escape.
Women’s Unfulfilled Responsibilities to Each Other

Early in the novel, Esperanza says that boys and girls live in different worlds, and this observation proves true of men and women in every stage of life. Since the women’s world is often isolating and grants women so little power, Esperanza feels women have a responsibility to protect and make life easier for each other. However, on Mango Street, this responsibility goes unfulfilled. The boys and men in The House on Mango Street are consistently violent, exploitative, or absent, but their world is so foreign to the women that no woman rebels against the men or calls for them to change. Esperanza may call out for women to help each other in the face of the unchanging male world, but no one answers.
Esperanza accepts more responsibility for women as she matures, and as she does, she confronts other women’s indifference more directly. At first Esperanza is responsible only for her younger sister, Nenny, but her responsibilities grow when she befriends Sally. Esperanza tries to save Sally from having to kiss a group of boys in “The Monkey Garden.” However, when Esperanza tries to enlist one of the boys’ mothers to help her, the mother refuses. Later, Sally abandons Esperanza and leaves her vulnerable to male attackers in “Red Clowns.” Esperanza expects female friends to protect each other, and Sally does not fulfill this responsibility. Ultimately, Esperanza understands that even if and when she leaves Mango Street, she will continue to take responsibility for the women in her neighborhood. She feels the responsibility deeply and will not forget it."

Love as Power

The theme of love as power is most apparent in some of the “Woman Hollering Creek” stories, but it appears even in Mango Street, in the lives of Esperanza’s acquaintances and in her own youthful experience. Rafaela, Minerva, Mamacita, and Sally—after her marriage—are all overpowered by their husbands, physically or otherwise, as a matter of course. Whatever the relationship between her own parents, it seems that Esperanza sees a normal love-and-marriage relationship as one in which the man holds and exercises complete power over “his” woman. The only alternative, she believes, would have the woman holding complete power. In “Beautiful and Cruel” she decides that she prefers that option, but a possible relationship in which power is held equally by both partners, a more-or-less equal give-and-take relationship, or even one in which power is not a major factor (or weapon) seems not to occur to her. Interestingly, the love-equals-power relationship is figured here in several instances as visual gaze: Boys stare at Marin, and she boldly returns the gaze; Sire looks at Esperanza, and she affects not to be frightened; women who have been disempowered (or who have never had any power) look out through a window at what they cannot have.

In the “Woman Hollering Creek” stories the love-equals-power theme is further explored, with Juan Pedro in the title story seeing Cleófilas, taking her from her father, and beginning to hold complete power over her. Other women protagonists, however (and one man, Tristán in “Remember the Alamo”), exercise the “beautiful and cruel” option, keeping power in their own hands and in their gaze—even, in the cases of Clemencia in “Never Marry a Mexican” and Lupe in “Bien Pretty,” extending that power by “possessing” their men in their art and in effect distributing it to others who look at the men’s images in their paintings.

Alienation and Displacement

Another important theme in both books is the individual’s feeling of alienation or displacement. Esperanza in Mango Street expresses the feeling often, saying she does not “belong” where she is and that she wishes she were from somewhere else—although Alicia assures her that she “is Mango Street” and will carry it with her when she leaves there. In the “Woman Hollering Creek” stories, various characters’ express similar feelings: the speakers in “‘Mericans” and “Tepeyac”; Cleófilas in the title story, who first longs to get away from her hometown to Seguin, Texas, and then longs to be away from Seguin; and all the characters who feel alienated from each other and even from themselves. These last named include Clemencia, Lupe, and especially Tristán, who is so self-alienated he has created a new identity for himself, refers to himself (by his new name) in third person, and wishes to separate himself completely from the person he was in the past.

Individualism versus Cultural Traditions

Both of these themes—that of love-as-power and that of alienation—seem to proceed from the third and larger theme of the individual’s conflict with a tradition that is both cultural and familial. Almost every female character in both books experiences the intensely potent force of this tradition influencing her to follow her Latino family tradition into marriage, when she would cease to “belong” to her father and begin to “belong” to her husband. Most of those who do not resist this force are portrayed as unhappy in the world they inhabit, from Esperanza’s mother, who is “self-alienated” to the extent that she has not been able to utilize her artistic gifts and interests, to young women like Sally, Minerva, and Cleófilas, who are trapped in marriages to brutal men.

Those who do resist it are likely to remain partly (and unhappily) within the tradition, in that their relationships with the opposite sex are still power struggles. To the extent that they are successful in their resistance, they remain unhappily alienated from their own cultural roots and the feelings of loyalty they cannot eradicate. One such woman is Inés in “Eyes of Zapata,” who left her father for Zapata and later gained a kind of independence from him (at least in a material sense, mostly because he ignored her for long periods), but who is still tied to her lover in their love-as-a-power-struggle relationship. Another is Clemencia, who heeded her mother’s advice not to follow tradition, but who then became alienated from her mother and involved in a long, obsessive “love” affair with a married man (who, ironically, is attracted to her cultural identity as a “Mexican” but would never divorce his wife and marry her because of that identity). Tristán, of course, is separated from his cultural tradition by his homosexuality; he clings to what he can of it in his art, as a performer of traditional dances, and he both mocks and pays tribute to tradition by utilizing a kind of male “drag”—an exaggeration of the masterful, powerful, intensely masculine Latino persona.

The only characters who seem to be able to avoid the double-bind of love-as-power and/or alienation are those who find a strength within their tradition that allows them to exist as self-respecting individuals. One such is “Ixchel” in “One Holy Night,” who has become (in her own mind) sort of an embodiment of the ancient mythos into which her lover—himself deeply alienated, to the point of probable insanity—initiated her. Raised in a very traditional household and apparently happy there, she easily made the transition into an older tradition—and is saved, by her lover’s physical and effectively complete disappearance from her life, from having to reconcile the myth with mundane existence. “Ixchel” achieved independence, power, and a sense of centeredness, of being where she belongs, by in effect going into tradition and coming out the other side. Another apparently fortunate character is Chayo of “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” who has discovered a link between her familial/cultural tradition and a broader world-mythos that allows her to participate in the power of the virgin/mother goddesses (including, as she sees it, the Virgin of Guadalupe/Mother of Christ) and to be both independent and centered in her own place."