Questions and Answers for The House on Mango Street
The House on Mango Street
What are six metaphors from The House on Mango Street? Why are they important?
Before I can help you discuss some of the metaphors in The House on Mango Street, let’s be clear on what a metaphor means. A metaphor tends to refer to something that is representative or symbolic...
The House on Mango Street
Identify personification in The House on Mango Street.
Personification is a figure of speech that authors use to give animals, ideas, or things human attributes. In other words, non-human things are portrayed in a way that makes readers think that...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, what do the mice symbolize in the vignette of Alicia Who Sees Mice?
The mouse may also symbolize vigilance or alertness. In the vignette, we are not really told whether the mice exist or are merely the figments of Alicia's imagination. What we do know is that...
The House on Mango Street
What is the theme of "Hairs" from The House on Mango Street, and what lines describe the vignette's tone?
This short vignette or prose poem combines several themes. One is the diversity within a single family. The parents and their four children may have various resemblances that allow outsiders to...
The House on Mango Street
What are two examples of allusion, hyperbole, and symbolism in The House on Mango Street?
An interesting allusion is in the vignette entitled "The Family of Little Feet." In this section, Esperanza and her friends are trying on old high-heeled shoes. The girls feel as though it is...
The House on Mango Street
What are two examples of hyperbole in The House on Mango Street?
A hyperbole is an exaggeration and is used for emphasis. In The House on Mango Street, the following passage contains a hyperbole: On Tuesdays, Rafaela's husband comes home late because that's the...
The House on Mango Street
What does Esperanza's house symbolize in The House on Mango Street?
Houses symbolize many things in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. They represent freedom and confinement, success and failure, and fantasy and reality. Beginning with the house on...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, what figure of speech is "tortilla star" and what does it mean?
Sandra Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street, is a Mexican American writer. Her protagonist, Esperanza Cordero, is a Latina preteen living in Chicago, Illinois. Esperanza's first-person...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, why does Esperanza say, "All brown all around, we are safe"?
In Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, the passage that you refer to takes place in Chapter 12. Cisneros writes: All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, how does Esperanza change over the course of the story?
Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros’s 1983 novel The House on Mango Street presents the narrative of Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana girl living in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago....
The House on Mango Street
Why are the Four Skinny Trees important to Esperanza in The House on Mango Street?
The Four Skinny Trees are out of place on Mango Street. To a great extent, Esperanza identifies with them because she sees herself out of place, to a large extent, on Mango Street. In identifying...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, why does Geraldo have no last name? From the information Cisneros provides, do you...
Geraldo has no last name because there are no identification documents on his person. The text tells us that Geraldo had nothing in his pockets at the time of his death. Because he had no...
The House on Mango Street
What was the author's purpose in writing The House on Mango Street?
Authors write for many reasons. I think the key to Cisneros’s purpose is in the narrator. In The House on Mango Street, the narrator is a young Latino girl. She describes her neighborhood and...
The House on Mango Street
In the vignette "Beautiful and Cruel" in House on Mango Street, Esperanza says, "I have begun my own quiet war." What...
Esperanza's war is her fight against the social expectations that are placed upon her as a young woman. Let's look at the words that Esperanza uses in this sentence. The first thing that stands out...
The House on Mango Street
What is the conflict and solution in The House on Mango Street?
In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the main conflict is an internal one for main character Esperanza. The house on Mango Street was where Esperanza lived during her formative years,...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, how does Sandra Cisneros use language, (personification, simile, imagery) to create...
In Chapter Four of The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros uses personification in one of her most important quotes. Esperanza, the main character, is named after her grandmother. Esperanza does...
The House on Mango Street
What cultures apply to Esperanza in The House on Mango Street?
Esperanza is a member of many cultures, and she feels affinity for and experiences others. She is Latina, as her family comes from Mexico, and she is also a Chicana, which means an American person...
The House on Mango Street
What is the theme of "Papa who Wakes up Tired in the Dark” in The House on Mango Street?
In the vignette "Papa Wakes up Tired in the Dark," Esperanza's father comes into her room to tell her that her grandfather has passed away. She is completely taken off guard when she sees her...
The House on Mango Street
What is a vignette in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros?
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is structured using a series of vignettes, which are grouped under chapters that address a common theme. A vignette is to a story as a sketch is to a...
The House on Mango Street
What are some examples of repetition in chapter 4 of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros?
In the fourth vignette, entitled "My Name," Esperanza reveals her feelings about her name, its origin, its meaning, and how society views it. At the beginning of the vignette, Esperanza repeats the...
The House on Mango Street
why is alicia "afraid of nothing except four-legged fur, and fathers"?
Four-legged furry creatures—namely mice—scare the living daylights out of Alicia. Primarily, that's because they act as a constant reminder of just how poor she is, and how hopeless life seems....
The House on Mango Street
How can I describe Esperanza in part 1 of The House on Mango Street?
In the early part of the book, Esperanza gives the impression that her identity is still in the early stages of being formed. Somewhat inevitably, this has a noticeable effect on her storytelling...
The House on Mango Street
From The House on Mango Street, please provide three examples of imagery with page numbers.
Imagery has to do with phrases, references, or figurative language that uses one or more of the fives senses. The creation of imagery happens when an author uses the senses of sight, smell, taste,...
The House on Mango Street
Is this conflict internal or external in The House on Mango Street?
The conflict in The House on Mango Street is both internal and external. Esperanza Cordero's external conflict comes from living in a ghetto-type environment. She is not happy with this location....
The House on Mango Street
Why is Esperanza afraid of Sire and what do her parents say about him in "House on Mango Street"?
Sire is a man in the neighborhood who leers at Esperanza as she walks by. He has a girlfriend, Lois, who "is tiny and pretty and smells like baby's skin...but she doesn't know how to tie her...
The House on Mango Street
What is the irony in The House on Mango Street?
One example of irony is in the chapter titled "Those Who Don't." Esperanza talks about strangers who come through her neighborhood. She observes that they are afraid and view her neighborhood as...
The House on Mango Street
Why does Esperanza admire Marin in The House on Mango Street?
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...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, how does Esperanza's environment affect her?
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a coming-of-age novel told in vignettes from the point of view of Esperanza, a young girl who grows up in a barrio neighborhood in Chicago. How the...
The House on Mango Street
What are two significant events in The House On Mango Street?
One significant event in The House on Mango Street is when Cathy tells Esperanza that her family is moving away from Mango Street. This is eye-opening for Esperanza, because Cathy is referring to...
The House on Mango Street
I don't understand what a speaker is in literature. I know its the voice that comes to mind when reading, but i don't...
To determine the "speaker" or "voice" of the narrator, you have to determine from what point of view the narrator is speaking. (Think of it in everyday spoken language.) If the narrator is...
The House on Mango Street
What is the symbolism in The House on Mango Street?
As the previous answer discusses, the family house is definitely one of the most prominent symbols in The House on Mango Street. I'll add a couple more symbols from the book to this discussion: the...
The House on Mango Street
Is Esperanza really Sandra Cisneros? Are all the events in the book real events that are tied together, forming...
If we look at what we know about Sandra Cisneros's life from interviews and compare it to Esperanza's life, we can see similarities. The House on Mango Street is autobiographical in the same way...
The House on Mango Street
What do chanclas symbolize to Esperanza?
Chanclas are sandals, and in the vignette entitled "Chanclas," Esperanza does not have any nice ones for the baptism party held at Precious Blood Church. Her mother buys her a new pink dress, a new...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, what is the diction of the chapter in "Hairs"?
By referring to "diction" we simply mean word choice. Of course, every text is shaped incredibly by the choice of each individual word as chosen by the author, and this vignette from this...
The House on Mango Street
Why is hair important in The House on Mango Street?
To answer this question you need look no further than the vignette entitled "Hairs," which comes towards the beginning of this excellent novella. This short fragment explores the way that hair is...
The House on Mango Street
Discuss the relationship between Esperanza and her mother in The House on Mango Street. Do they share any...
Both Esperanza and her mother have dreams of a better life; both want something more than the house on Mango Street. The house on Mango Street is "small and red with tight steps in front and...
The House on Mango Street
What are the internal and external conflicts for Esperanza in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros?
It is clear that one of the biggest internal and external conflicts that Esperanza faces is her own desire to break free from her barrio and to leave it, seeking her own life and forming her own...
The House on Mango Street
What are examples of hyperbole, flashback, full circle, repetition, use of 5 senses, and onomatopoeia in The House on...
The following references are examples of figurative language and other literary devices in The House on Mango Street: Hyperbole is used in the chapter "And Some More" when Nenny talks about snow....
The House on Mango Street
How do people who live in Esperanza's neighborhood view it?
In the section titled “Cathy Queen of Cats,” Esperanza makes her first friend in her new neighborhood. Cathy tells Esperanza that the reason her family is moving is that the neighborhood is going...
The House on Mango Street
What are some symbols in The House on Mango Street?
One of the symbols in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street is shoes. At least twice in the novel, shoes are mentioned as representing one's inner self and the conflict which can arise as a...
The House on Mango Street
What is the theme of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros?
This excellent novel is above all a coming of age story that charts one girl's discovery and acceptance of her position as a poor Latino in America. The fragments that we are presented with in this...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, what does Esperanza find shameful or burdensome about her name, and why did Cisneros...
Esperanza spends time discussing her views of her name in the vignette titled "My Name" in the novel. Even though her name means "hope" in English, she sees it as a burden. According to Esperanza,...
The House on Mango Street
What literary elements are in the last paragraph of "The First Job" in The House on Mango Street?
Esperanza's first job is obtained by her Aunt Lala at the Peter Pan Photo Finishers. The last paragraph of "The First Job" describes an "older Oriental man" who comes up to talk to her, offers her...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, what does the quotation mean from "The Monkey Garden"? "I looked at my feet in their...
This excellent vignette that makes up one of the chapters of this coming-of-age novel concerns an epiphany regarding Esperanza's own sense of sexuality and the role of women in her community. Note...
The House on Mango Street
What does the author have in common with the main character in The House on Mango Street?
Sandra Cisneros wrote The House on Mango Street. Cisneros had similar experiences to Esperanza, the protagonist, in The House on Mango Street. Cisneros too moved around from house to house. She...
The House on Mango Street
Why did Esperanza's great-grandmother spend her life looking out the window in The House on Mango Street?
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...
The House on Mango Street
What are two examples of figurative language in the vignettes "Alicia Who Sees Mice" and "A Rice Sandwich" from The...
The very short chapter "Alicia Who Sees Mice" is a sketch of one of Esperanza's friends, who wants to escape her life and eventually does by going to college. Figurative language is part of the...
The House on Mango Street
Why does Cisneros end The House on Mango Street with the lines, "For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot...
At the beginning of The House on Mango Street, Esperanza makes it clear that the house on Mango Street is not the one her family has been dreaming about. She says, "But the house on Mango Street is...
The House on Mango Street
In "Our Good Day," at this stage of her life, what are Esperanza’s friendships based on, and what do her friends mean...
As a young adult novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a coming-of-age story, and therefore, relationships play a key role in Esperanza’s development as a character. How she...
The House on Mango Street
In The House on Mango Street, how does she convince her mother to let her go to the canteen for lunch in chapter "A...
Esperanza manages to convince her mother to let her eat lunch at school by repeatedly nagging at her for a few days until she gives in. Initially her mother argues that it would create extra work...
Showing 1-50 of 255