Esperanza's Coming Of Age In The House On Mango Street

The House on Mango Street ultimately values growth. “The House on Mango Street” is a story written in vignettes that shows how much a young girl matures and turns into a woman. In this story, there are numerous vignettes that specify when she is growing up, and that shows some steps that take part as people to grow up. The House on Mango Street is a coming of age story where a girl named Esperanza, the protagonist, is growing up as the story progresses.

Esperanza’s family is sort of poor but not entirely. Her family has moved from place to place until they settle at the House on Mango Street.

When they settle down this puts Esperanza on this new journey of growing up. In a vignette called “hips”, she discovers she starts growing hips. This sparks an argument between her and her sister on why women grow hips. This shows Esperanza is starting to become a woman.

Esperanza is the type of character that draws attention to herself without knowing she’s doing it.

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Since she’s still in the early stages of maturity and growth, she still makes some mistakes without knowing it. Esperanza reveals personal experiences through which the reader is able to determine what kind of person she is; her views on life, how she views herself, as well as how her poverty affects her view of life, her view of her future, and how her poverty currently affects her place in the world.

Coming of age is like a plant, It starts off with nothing but a seed, small, sweet, and innocent but slowly grows over time into something much bigger.

Much like a plant, a person can grow and learn. This can be seen in the novel by Sandra Cisneros House on Mango Street. The beginning of the novel shows the build-up of sadness from moving constantly from place to place, always having to share and have the responsibility of her younger sister nanny, living in a neighborhood where she feels like an outcast which leads to her struggling with her identity. Even when she makes friends, she struggles to tell them how she really feels since they don’t have the same experience.

Towards the middle of the book, you start seeing a change in the way Esperanza acts and thinks. She starts acting like an adult. In the end, is when Esperanza really starts to grow when she gets her very first job and learns to cope and deal with death. This novel uses symbolism, language, indirect characterization, diction, and selection of details to portray the theme of coming of age and maturing and how both good and bad experiences play an important role in how someone grows and matures.