The House on Mango Street Group

Question:

esisisi
esisisi
Student
High School - 9th Grade

Why does Esperanza admire Marin in "House on Mango Street"?

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Posted by esisisi on Tuesday January 6, 2009 at 12:40 PM and tagged with characters, esperanza, marin, the house on mango street, themes.

Answers:

  1. esisisi
    esisisi Student
    High School - 9th Grade

    Esperanza admire Marin becuase she is the oldest one. and she is look for some one that

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    Posted by esisisi on Tuesday January 6, 2009 at 12:44 PM


  2. dymatsuoka

    eNotes Editor

    Esperanza admires Marin because "she is older and knows lots of things".  Marin is worldly, and flaunts a sense of sexuality that the younger girls are only beginning to discover.  Marin also has dreams of escaping Mango Street, and appears to the others to have options which will allow her to do that.  She has a boyfriend in Puerto Rico, whom she plans to marry when she goes back, and if she stays in Chicago another year, she will "get a real job downtown...(where) you always get to look beautiful and get to wear nice clothes and can meet someone in the subway who might marry you a dn take you to live in a big house far away".

    Marin lives in an environment tightly controlled by her cousin's family.  She must babysit her little cousins all day, and can only come out in the evenings, and only in the front yard.  Yet even within such strict boundaries, she rebels, smoking and "flirting with the neighborhood boys", and her audacity is appealing to the less sophisticated Esperanza.  Marin's dreams of escaping Mango Street are unrealistic.  They are dependent upon finding someone to marry her who will provide her with what she does not have, and as she admits, her boyfriend in Puerto Rico "didn't get a job yet".  She does not see that her avenues of release will only bind her further in the constricting life she abhors, and neither do the younger girls, who are mesmerized by her seeming worldliness and sophistication ("Marin"_.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/house-mango/
    http://www.enotes.com/house-mango/other-characters
    http://www.enotes.com/house-mango/part-iv-marin-those-who...

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    Posted by dymatsuoka on Wednesday January 7, 2009 at 7:16 PM