zone provided by her family life. This explains why Esperanza starts off by talking about her family. It also explains why it is only later on that Esperanza will reach out to the broader community and establish meaningful connections with the people who live in it. For now, she's still working on her identity, and needs to improve on her levels of self-awareness before she's finally able to venture outside into her neighborhood.

In the first part of the book, Esperanza is a work in progress, observing astutely the world she lives in as she tries to find her place in it.  She is a seeker, alert and observant, aware of the conditions with which the women in her life have to contend, and thoughtfully examining how these conditions relate to her own life.  Like any other girl her age, she experiments with makeup and high heel shoes, only to step back when she discovers how these embellishments accentuate her womanhood and attract male attention of the type for which she is not ready.  She also explores and appreciates the dynamics within her own family, and while she learns the value of the love in her own home, she also begins to feel the limitations imposed upon her by her environment.  Esperanza wants more than what life in the barrio offers her, and it appears that she possesses the courage and initiative to reach beyond the confines of her immediate neighborhood to achieve better things.

As the story progresses and Esperanza matures, she evidences a sense of empathy and responsibility "for the ones (she will leave) behind".  Even as she distances herself from her family and the barrio, she resolves not to forget them.  She is ambitious enough to rise above the self-perpetuating cycle which entraps women who have little education and nothing to look forward to other than raising numerous children alone in abject poverty.  Esperanza wants something better for her life, but, when she has achieved it, she will not "forget who or where (she comes) from", and will return to help those she left behind who do not have the strength to get out on their own.

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 Mango Street, the house symbolizes confinement, failure, and reality. Esperanza is embarrassed about her living conditions. This is the first house her family has owned and not rented, but it doesn't live up to the fantasies she had of a house that her parents promised.

They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallways stairs, but stairs inside it like the house on T.V. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.

In reality, the house has only one washroom, and everyone has to share a bedroom. It is a definite step up from the flat on Loomis that they rented and had to leave because the pipes burst and the landlord wouldn't replace them, but it is nothing like what Esperanza envisioned. At the end of chapter one, she shares her dream of one day having a house that will live up to her fantasy.

The house symbolizes failure because it falls short of what Esperanza's parents promised, but it is the best they can do with a growing family and limited opportunities. Its empty garage speaks of the car they don't own. Its cramped quarters speak of their poverty. It is in disrepair, with crumbling bricks and swollen door jambs.

The house symbolizes confinement in the difference between how girls and boys are treated. For example, in the chapter entitled "Boys & Girls," Esperanza explains some of the differences between growing up as a girl versus growing up as a boy in their neighborhood. Their brothers interact with them inside the home but ignore them outside of it. Boys have the freedom to do what they want, whereas girls are expected to stay at home or in the yard. The boys are carefree, whereas Esperanza is saddled with the responsibility of her younger sister.

Someday I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.

Later in the book, Esperanza speaks of the kind of house she will have in the future. Her future home will be the opposite of the one at 4006 Mango Street. It will represent freedom, success, and her realized fantasies. From the chapter "A House of My Own":

Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

In this quote, readers see that she seeks freedom from the patriarchal society that values men above women. She proclaims that she will be free from that, and her house will be her own. In this chapter as well as the last chapter, she also imagines the success she will have. This success will enable her to have a house of her own and also to go back to help those who don't have a way out of Mango Street.

The house Esperanza dreams of represents her fantasies, and readers get a sense that Esperanza, unlike her parents—and with her writing skills—will have the power to realize her fantasies.

Esperanza is a very intelligent young lady with a marked sense of curiosity about the outside world. This helps to explain why she's so intensely frustrated about life on Mango Street. Her neighborhood seems so small and narrow-minded, certainly not the kind of place for someone with an instinctive realization that there's a much bigger world out there.

Esperanza tries various methods of escape, none of which seem to work. Wearing high heels may give her a sense of power and control, but only for a very brief period of time. The inappropriate behavior of a tramp drives home the painful realization that this is a community steeped in machismo and misogyny, where women are regarded as little more than sex objects or eye candy.

But because Esperanza has the capacity to change, she's able to develop a completely different outlook on her community. Yes, Mango Street is steeped in poverty, crime, and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. But Esperanza now realizes that she has a responsibility to the people of the neighborhood. And she attempts to fulfill this responsibility through her writing. As well as developing an obvious talent, Esperanza's writing will allow her to tell the stories of people in her neighborhood—especially women—traditionally denied a voice.

Esperanza is different from the other women on Mango Street because, first, she and her family are newcomers, and she doesn't feel she belongs there. The "sad, red" house is small, the worst one on the block, and Esperanza feels disappointed and alienated. The house doesn't align with her dreams.

But Esperanza differs more profoundly from the other women on Mango Street because of her aspirations. She wants to break out of the traditional female role and be a writer. She plans to get ahead in the world. Like her great grandmother, the women are Mango Street are more likely to "wait by the window" than pursue their hopes and dreams— or they will let a man string them along while life passes them by. Esperanza has inherited her great grandmother's name, but she doesn't want to live as she did—or as so many other women and girls on Mango Street do.

Esperanza, at the end of the book, describes herself as stronger than the other women on her street. She is too strong to be kept there and kept down. She says she will leave with her books and paper for all the women who can't. She will write—and later, she will return, but not until she has made something of her life.

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. This novel contains a series of vignettes and contains elements of Mexican-American culture, specifically with regards to gender, sexuality, race, and socioeconomic class. The genre is bildungsroman, which focuses on the moral and psychological growth between adolescence to adulthood.

At the start of the novel, the reader learns that Esperanza has no desire to stay on Mango Street over the long term. However, as Esperanza matures, she becomes more aware of the socioeconomics of her family and her neighbors. She comes to realize that their poverty is what keeps them on Mango Street. Even when she leaves the street eventually, her poverty will follow her, and as such, Mango Street will not leave her as long as she is poor.

Additionally, Esperanza becomes more aware of her body and her sexuality throughout the novel. She is aware of her growing hips, which will one day bear children, and she takes romantic interest in boys. This theme of sexuality is perverted by instances of sexual assault. At the carnival, Esperanza is sexually abused by a group of boys. Esperanza’s friend Sally marries an older man in an attempt to escape her abusive father, but she is unsuccessful as her husband perpetuates the domestic abuse.

Although the book only covers a year, Esperanza starts out as a young girl and ends the book as a young woman. A number of things contribute to her coming of age in so short a time. One thing that happens is puberty. Over the course of the novel, Esperanza's body begins to change, and with that the way she relates to others begins to change as well. This culminates with her betrayal by her friend Sally and her assault at the carnival in the chapter "Red Clowns." But the real change Esperanza goes through is not physical or sexual, but one of understanding. She becomes more aware of her surroundings, the people around her, herself, and her relationship to the neighborhood. She learns that all the people around her are trapped on Mango Street in one way or another. She also learns that she is not like them. I think this awareness is neatly expressed in Esperanza's comment on her great-grandmother: "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 things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window."

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 community is run down. There are dangers all around.

The novel opens with a description of the Cordero family's house on Mango Street, the most recent in a long line of houses they have occupied. Esperanza is dissatisfied with the house, which is small and cramped, and doesn't want to stay there. But Mango Street is her home now, and she sets out to try to understand it.

Esperanza's environment causes external conflict. She is not happy with her environment. She longs to live in a better house in a better neighborhood. Of course, that want happen anytime soon. Already, Esperanza's father is working two jobs:

First there is Esperanza's own family, her kind father who works two jobs and is absent most of the time; her mother, who can speak two languages and sing opera but never finished high school; her two brothers Carlos and Kiki; and her little sister Nenny.

As for internal conflict, Esperanza is at an age that fills her with many choices. She struggles with her own identity. She is at a teenage age in which she desires to have nice clothes and such. Likewise, she struggles with things that are possibly in her power to change:

Like all adolescents, Esperanza struggles to forge her own identity. In many respects, Esperanza's own keen observations and musings about the women in her neighborhood are her way of processing what will happen to her in the future and what is within her power to change.

Esperanza is at the age that her conversations deal with ideas about her sexuality. She is surrounded by adolescent myths and superstitions about sexuality. Life for Esperanza contains inward struggles and outward struggles. She has learned through some of the characters that early marriages often end in an abusive situation. She desires to have a better life than some of the ones around her. Fortunately, Esperanza's dreams help her deal with both the internal and external conflicts while growing up in the ghetto:

Throughout the book there is a tension between Esperanza's ties to the barrio and her impressions of another kind of life outside of it. Ultimately, Esperanza's ability to see beyond her immediate surroundings allows her to transcend her circumstances and immaturity.

Esperanza dreams of owning her own house. Still, she plans to return for those who have no way out. She desires to help those who are struggling with conflict in the neighborhood. Because Esperanza is receiving an education, she has hope of leaving her internal and external conflicts behind her:

It is Esperanza's power to see beyond the barriers of her neighborhood, fueled by her education gained through reading and writing, that keep her from being trapped in the same roles as the women who surround her.

Because of the internal and external conflicts all around Esperanza, she has grown and matured. She is wiser for all of her turmoils and conflicts. She is determined to make it. She will leave it all behind one day:

'One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all these books and paper? Why did she march so far away? They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot come out.'

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 identity. The earlier vignettes in particular talk a lot about the women in her barrio and how they act as role models in various ways. yet as Esperanza develops, and she understands more about the kind of lives that her friends live, being married to husbands who can be abusive and having children at an early age, and decides that she doesn't want to be trapped in this kind of life. Consider the vignette entitled "Minerva Writes Poems," and the way that this presents the possible future for Esperanza if she stays in her barrio and settles:

Minerva is only a little bit older than me but already she has two kids and a husband who left... Minerva cried because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays.

This leads to Esperanza's resolution in "Beautiful and Cruel," when she defiantly states:

I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

Esperanza sees all of her female friends dominated in a patriarchal society that squashes their identity in a profoundly negative way. Her resolution defines her as it defiantly expresses her desire to form her own identity and to not let those around her form her identity for her.

Another conflict she faces is the instability and lack of sense of belonging that she experiences in the barrio. Note how in "A House of My Own," she dreams of "Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem." Her final decision to leave Mango Street is therefore a triumph for Esperanza over her conflicts, yet at the same time she is determined not to forget her roots. She herself admits that she is "too strong to stay in Mango street," yet at the same time she says that:

They will know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.

Therefore, when we think of internal and external conflicts in this excellent novel, it is clear that Esperanza faces massive peer pressure to do what the other women do in her society and to marry young and settle down and have children.

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 of Mexican descent. She is an American, as she's growing up in Chicago and experiences the American culture and way of life. She watches TV in English, knows about American ads and television shows, and goes to the library to read English-language books. She is also associated with the Catholic church and attends a school where nuns teach. 

Living in a poor urban section of Chicago, she learns about other cultures. She has friends from Puerto Rico, like Louie, her brother's friend, and she hears different dialects of Spanish. She compares her own culture to Chinese culture and says of her great-grandmother: "She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse." She is a member of many different cultural groups and is exposed to others in her life on Mango Street. 

One of the cultures which is most powerful in this novella is the Hispanic culture that Esperanza and all of her neighbours emerge from. It is this culture that exerts such a powerful influence on her identity, as her Hispanic background separates her from Americans and also associates her with a certain economic class that is working class and has an interesting relationship with the law. The various vignettes present Latino life in all of its richness and diversity, with the influence of the homeland and Spanish forming a massive part of the various characters' cultural identity. In "Geraldo No Last Name," for example, Esperanza paints a very vivid picture of the kind of conditions and lack of rights experienced by Hispanic immigrants:

They never saw the kitchenettes. They never knew about the two-room flats and sleeping rooms he rented, the weekly money orders sent home, the currency exchange. How could they?

Esperanza therefore through her narrative identifies a large variety of cultural influences that coalesce to form her own unique identity. The biggest of these is of course her Hispanic heritage, but at the same time her upbringing on Mango Street, associating with other Latino families who struggle to make ends meet and miss their home countries and have a tenuous relationship with law and order are very important influences as well.

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 environment of the neighborhood affects Esperanza’s perceptions of life and herself is a theme throughout the stories.

In the chapter “My Name,” Esperanza indicates that she doesn’t like her name because it sets her apart from mainstream society. She associates her heritage and living conditions with sadness in contrast to the optimism and prosperity of post-war America.

In English, my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.

Esperanza experiences a loss of hope in the chapter “Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold.” She describes the neighborhood junk store run by a cheapskate owner who doesn’t turn on the lights unless there is a sale. At the insistence of her sister Nenny, the store owner demonstrates for the girls how to operate a “music box” which appears to be a wind-up Victrola. The effect of the music on Esperanza is immediate: the sounds evoke in her otherworldly scenes and emotions until it becomes too much.

And then I don’t know why, but I have to turn around and pretend I don’t care about the box so Nenny won’t see how stupid I am.

The junk store owner then flatly declares the music box isn’t for sale and shuts the lid, thus shutting Esperanza off from a connection to a bigger, more creative life.

The chapter “There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do” shows how the environment of the neighborhood creates a careless and even callous attitude in Esperanza and the other residents.

Esperanza describes with embarrassment her neighbor Rosa Vargas, whose husband abandoned the family, leaving a lonely and exhausted Rosa to raise their children. The Vargas kids have little supervision and tear about the neighborhood “without respect for all living things, including themselves.” Esperanza makes an effort to help Rosa and finds that:

But after a while you get tired of being worried about kids who aren’t even yours.

At the chapter’s end, Esperanza describes the death of Angel Vargas in a detached manner, suggesting that she has become worn down by the stress of living in the neighborhood.

The House on Mango Street is a narrative about a girl who lives in the barrio and finds it an environment that is repugnant to her because she realizes early on that people are often judged by the house in which they live. Further, she finds the barrio a dangerous place as well as an environment in which her poetic spirit cannot flourish.

Esperanza is embarrassed about her house as being the worst place in her neighborhood. When a nun from her school passes by and sees Esperanza playing in her front yard, she remarks,"You live there?" as she notices that

Bricks are crumbling in places and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in....
[On the third floor there are] wooden bars Papa had nailed on the window so we wouldn't fall out....

There is a certain fear instilled in Esperanza as she is warned about various people in her neighborhood. One day when she and her friends put on small high heels that a woman has given them and walk about, men make lurid comments to them. There is, for instance, the lecherous "Bum Man" who asks one of them to come closer.

"You are a pretty girl....What's your name, pretty girl?
....If I give you a dollar will you give me a kiss?"

The girls turn and run in fear.

Because her family is poor, Esperanza must go to work at a young age. In the vignette entitled "My First Job," she dresses in a navy blue dress to make herself seem older and is hired to place camera negatives in envelops for shipping. The job is not too strenuous, although Esperanza tires of standing. After gobbling down her lunch privately because she is afraid to sit down where so many women and men look at her, she later sees a man from the next shift who comes in early. She thinks he has "friendly eyes," so when he talks to her Esperanza engages in conversation with him. The man tells her it is his birthday and asks if he could have a little kiss for his birthday. Since he is old, Esperanza acquiesces and moves closer to place her lips on his cheek; however, as she narrates,

...he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't let go.

Esperanza is shaken by this experience in which, again, an older man seeks to rob her of her innocence.  

Esperanza's environment affects her in profound ways.  The physical elements of her community as well as the social relationships she finds there leave a mark on Esperanza as she grows up.  First, Esperanza feels shame because she lives in a run-down house.  Before the family moved to Mango Street, she was shunned by a nun because her house had boarded windows.  She believed that moving into a house of their own would solve the family's problems.  However, Esperanza soon learns that poor communities are still poor even if the houses are owned by their inhabitants.  As Esperanza meets people in her new neighborhood, she learns about sorrow, abuse, and the desire for hope and freedom.  She describes Marin who "under the streetlight, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere.  I know.  Is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life."  Esperanza learns that others around her are all waiting for something to come rescue them and make their dreams come true.  By the end of the book, Esperanza vows to leave Mango Street to find her dreams and return to rescue the others.

In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops the character of Esperanza effectively. Esperanza lives on Mango Street. She deals with the everyday occurrences that happen in her neighborhood. Things that happen in her neighborhood continue to shape her as a character. Through the "forty-four short tales that evoke the circumstances and conditions of a Hispanic American ghetto in Chicago," Esperanza grows into a young woman.   

The narrative is seen through the eyes of Esperanza Cordero. As Esperanza is coming of age, she is beginning to think about life outside of the neighborhood. She dreams about leaving the neighborhood and having a better life. She vows to leave one day and take as many as she can with her:

Esperanza demonstrates empathy for those around her, particularly those who do not see beyond the confines of their situations: "One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.

As Esperanza shares vignettes of her cultural traditions, "her perceptions range from humorous anecdotes pulled from life in the barrio to more dark references to crime and sexual provocation." She effectively portrays other characters, particularly females. Esperanza matures throughout the stories she tells. She finds her sense of self identity through the women she analyzes. She analyzes the young women who wear black and make up. She walks around herself in high heel shoes, trying to determine her own identity. She is courageous enough to transcend her difficult circumstances. She realizes there is a bigger world out there and she longs to discover it. 

Truly, Esperanza finds herself while examining feminist ideas. Despite the unfairness, she realizes that there are separate rules for women and men. Inequalities exist on Mango Street. Esperanza is very perceptive. She observes women who are trapped in abusive marriages and vows to never grow up to be in such an abusive relationship:

"I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain."

She does not want to become a prisoner of her neighborhood. She will leave one day and find a better life, but she will not forget the neighborhood which helped shape her identity:

"One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who or where I came from."

Esperanza's ability to see the barriers of her neighborhood, along with her education in reading and writing, will keep her from becoming trapped like the women who surround her. 

All the characters on Mango Street have some bond or influence on Esperanza. The House on Mango Street is made up of vignettes (short, descriptive scenes) of parts of Esperanza's life which are important to her. Therefore, all the characters included in the vignettes are important to the development of Esperanza. Whether it is by direct interaction or observation, these characters on her street contribute to her becoming the person she is.

Obviously she has a closer "bond" with her family members and the neighborhood children and teenagers with whom she closely interacts, but other characters who she observes are as important of an influence on her because she draws facts about life and who she wants to become from these characters as well.

The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisnero's first novel and it traces the struggles of Esperanza Cordero, the narrator and a young Latino girl struggling to rise above her difficult circumstances and what is for her a rather embarrassing background of poverty. Esperanza's surname Cordero is Cisnero's own mother's name (Elvira Cordero Anguiano), her father's being Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral. As the daughter of a Mexican-American mother and Mexican father, Cisneros traveled between Mexico and America as a child as her father pursued his upholstery business. Cisneros challenges traditional values and aims to reveal that it is not necessary to deny one culture in order to be a part of another.

Esperanza is very aware of her surroundings and watches others in her neighborhood, especially the women as they manage their daily lives. It is these observations that give Esperanza insight into her own potential but also reveal to her that reality is very different from what she sees on TV and in magazines. Esperanza feels resentful about that. She searches for her own identity and for ways to create a life for herself which is not defined by her surroundings. She recognizes the struggle of many of the local women who cannot challenge their traditional role and at the same time, she knows that she needs to ensure that she does not deny her heritage or culture or "forget who you are." She learns some harsh life lessons.

When she arrives on Mango Street, Esperanza soon makes friends with two sisters, Rachel and Lucy, whose family moved from Texas some time ago. They are Esperanza's best friends throughout most of the book, though she also comes under the influence of an attractive but cruel girl called Sally.

The house on Mango Street is different from other places Esperanza and her family have lived because they own it, rather than renting, and do not have to share the yard with anyone. Esperanza had high expectations for this house because her parents had described their dream house to her before they moved in:

And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.

The house on Mango Street, by contrast, is somewhat dilapidated and rather small.

When she was living on Loomis Street, Esperanza met a nun who taught at her school while she was playing outside her house. The way the nun looked at her house made her feel "like nothing" and aspire to live in a better place:

I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it.

A careful analysis of this excellent novel reveals that the conflict facing Esperanza operates on many different levels. On the one hand, it is an external conflict, as Mango Street is shown to be part of a barrio where the people who live in it struggle against prejudice, poverty and oppression. Even those who should know better, such as the nun in the very first vignette, judge Esperanza and those in Mango Street based on the quality of their accommodation:

You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.

This is a theme that runs throughout the novel, as various characters face this conflict of being judged based on their skin colour, their ethnicity, the language that they speak and where they live.

Yet at the same time, we see that Esperanza also faces a massive internal conflict that is based around expectations and the lives that other women lead. As she grows up, Esperanza sees women marry young, have children young, and suffer domestic abuse as they are trapped in so many different ways. In "Beautiful and Cruel," we see how Esperanza responds to the internal conflict of being forced to choose between following societal expectations and making her own way. In a sense, of course, this is also an external conflict, as Esperanza feels the pressure that others place upon her to be more feminine, for example her parents. Note how this conflict, and Esperanza's response, is presented:

My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

Esperanza deliberately decides to be different from the other "tame" women around her by standing up for herself and not accepting a situation that would entrap her. There will be no "ball and chain" for her.

Thus we can see that Esperanza faces many different kinds of conflict in this excellent novel.

In "Bums in the Attic," Esperanza relates how her parents take her to look at large houses on hills on Sundays. She criticizes people who live in those houses because they know nothing of the suffering of her people in the inner-city. They don't know about garbage or rats, for example. She promises that when she owns her own house one day, she will let bums stay in the attic "because I know how it is to be without a house" (87). Because of her own suffering, and the suffering of all living on streets like Mango, she vows never to forget those who are less-fortunate than her when she becomes successful and owns her own home.

Next, in "The Three Sisters," Rachel and Lucy's baby sister dies and three interesting women come to the funeral. While there, one of them calls Esperanza over and tells her to make a wish. The woman seems to know what Esperanza wished for because she tells her, "When you leave you must remember to come back" (105). Esperanza is shocked that the woman must have guessed that her wish is to move away from the inner-city and to buy her own home one day. Apparently, this is possible because the woman knows that Esperanza will escape the plague of poverty in her life, but reminds her not to forget Mango Street, what she's learned from it, and who she is because of it.

Finally, Alicia, the college student, tells Esperanza in "Alicia and I Talking on Edna's Steps" that she can run, but she can't hide from Mango Street. "Like it or not you are Mango Street, and one day you'll come back too" (107). Esperanza says that she won't come back until they make it better, but who will do that? How are things going to change for the impoverished people on Mango Street? They wonder if the mayor might do something; but that makes Esperanza laugh.

In the selected vignettes from Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is indeed changing, for she not completely a child any more, but she is not completely an adolescent yet either. Let's look at what is happening to Esperanza in the various vignettes.

In “And Some More,” Esperanza and her friends reflect on language and how it works, but this apparently quite mature discussion ends up in an argument and descends into name-calling. In “The Family of Little Feet,” the girls parade around in high-heeled shoes given to them by a neighbor, exploring their attractiveness and even sexuality but not completely knowing what to do about it. The girls are not mature enough to deal with the interest the men show in them.

“A Rice Sandwich” is all about Esperanza reaching out for some independence. She does not want to go home for lunch, but she discovers that eating at the school canteen is not nearly as special as she has thought. She also must cope with Sister Superior's assumption that Esperanza lives in the worst part of the neighborhood, but she is not sure how to do that.

In “Chanclas,” Esperanza dresses up in her new dress and slip but is self-conscious because she must wear her old shoes. She dances with a cousin and is aware of that cousin's attention. She feels good about growing up.

The girls jump rope and talk about hips in “Hips,” but they do not really realize the power their “shake” could have over males. They want to be attractive to men. Nenny, however, makes a connection between hips and babies, and shows that even though she is the youngest, she is the most realistic.

Finally, in “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark,” Esperanza exhibits a new level of maturity when her father tells her that her grandfather has passed away. Esperanza thinks what she would do if she lost her own father, and she tries to comfort him.

You probably are referring to Esperanza, the protagonist of The House on Mango Street. She is the source of everything the reader knows in the book, as it's written from her point of view. She is a child when the book starts, but she is teetering on the brink of adolescence. Esperanza is the type of character the reader can trust, as she is very mature for her age. For example, she knows that while her mother tells her the house on Mango Street is only temporary, the family will likely live there for a long time. Esperanza is also a very astute observer of the people around her. For example, she says of Marin that she "is waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone to change her life" (page 27). Esperanza's observations seem far more mature than those of most children. She is also a character that the reader sympathizes with, as she portrays her life with poignancy. When she says at the end of the book that she hope to leave Mango Street one day to live an independent life as a writer, the reader wants her to succeed. 

There are elements of both types of conflict in Cisneros' work.  Esperanza struggles externally with the conflict that is posed between she as a young woman and her community, which has a fixed and narrow view of what options are there for women.  Esperanza struggles with this external condition because it proves to be a barrier between her state of being and her wishes.  It is here where this external conflict becomes internal.  Esperanza finds herself struggling with her own sense of identity because of this difference between what exists in her social order and what lies inside her own maturation.  The narrative operates in both of these spheres, internal and external.  Both conflicts feed off of one another in order to give a level of depth to Esperanza and what she experiences in her world.  It also allows her a platform for her to be able to articulate what she wishes her world to be because her experiences with conflict are both internal and external.