THE HOUSE ON THE MANGO STREET

MAJOR CHARACTERS Esperanza As Esperanza matures during the year that makes up The House on Mango Street, she experiences a series of awakenings, the most important being a sexual awakening. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza is not quite ready to emerge from the asexuality of childhood. She is completely ignorant about sex and says that boys and girls live in completely different worlds.

MAJOR CHARACTERS Sally When Esperanza begins desiring boys, she seeks out a friend in Sally, whom boys find desirable. Sally seems to be beautiful and cruel, like the women Esperanza admires in movies. She leans against the fence at school and doesn’t talk to anyone. Rumors about Sally’s promiscuity circulate, but Esperanza doesn’t believe them.

MAJOR CHARACTERS Nenny As the younger sister, Nenny is often Esperanza’s responsibility, and though her innocence is a major source of annoyance for Esperanza, it also signals Nenny’s independence. In many ways, Nenny is a pesky little sister. Esperanza must introduce Nenny to her new friends and keep her away from bad influences, such as the Vargas kids.

MAJOR EVENTS There are many important events in this book, which interweaves many family stories. I like to start with the first major event, which is the Corderos moving into the house on Mango Street. It is a major event for them (their first house), and is therefore full of expectation and emotion. Another event that defines the book is when Rachel and Lucy new little sister dies. This loss is sad in itself, of course, but it is also when Esperanza gets her palm read. This sets up her wish in the final chapter, and the expectation that it might happen: that she might have her own house some day.

CONFLICTS Esperanza also experience external conflicts. One of these conflicts is that Esperanza is poor and does not like that. We see Esperanza's lack of wealth at a party where she must wear her old pair of shoes. She is ashamed of them is trying to hide them from everyone.

CONFLICTS Another conflict is where she lives. Esperanza doesn't like the house she lives in because it is not her dream house. In past years, her family has rented a house, so they have never had a house that they can call their own. When her family finally gets a house that is their own, Esperanza is not happy. She pictured a beautiful, big house in her mind, so she was a little disappointed when she finds out what their house looks like. These conflicts are resolved when Esperanza decides that she will be away. She will be able to support herself and she can finally have her dream house.

CONFLICTS Esperanza experiences many internal conflicts. One of these conflicts is that she does not see herself as beautiful and  is always putting herself down. She sees the girls around her who receive attention from all of the boys. This upsets her because she is not getting any attention at all. This conflict slowly decreases as Esperanza becomes older and she is willing to accept herself for the way she is.

CONFLICTS Another internal conflict is self-definition. Esperanza doesn't really know who she is and is always searching for answers. One way she does her searching is by writing poetry. By writing poetry, Esperanza is able to express herself and is closer to defining who she is. She only sees the flaws she has, or in this case, the thorns. As she grows and develops, she sees her true beauty , which is depicted by the rose petals, and she is finally willing to accept herself.

THEME OF IDENTITY The House on Mango Street revolves around one girl and her struggle to fit the puzzle pieces of her identity – ethnicity, gender, cultural inheritance, sexuality, and economic status, to name a few examples – into a coherent whole. All of these facets come into play as Esperanza learns that, more than anything else, what defines her is her ability to tell stories. Her writing allows her to reconcile herself to those aspects of her background that made her feel uncomfortably different from her peers, and she emerges a confident writer with ambitious plans.

THEME OF SOCIETY AND CLASS Like many of the issues that come up in The House on Mango Street, social and class distinctions are discussed in a sort of oblique way. They're never given a name. Our protagonist, Esperanza, never comes out and says, "Hey, my family is poor!" No. That would be way too easy (and way too boring). Instead, we figure out that poverty and class distinctions are an issue by pulling clues from the text. The residents of Mango Street live in crumbling, run-down apartments and houses. They envy the beautiful, well-kept houses in nice neighborhoods of the city. And no one, not even the mayor, seems to want to help them resolve their problems.

THE THEME OF INNOCENCE The House on Mango Street is a coming-of-age story about a young girl named Esperanza. Like many coming-of-age stories, this one deals with Esperanza's loss of innocence and familiarization with sex. Tragically, her education in these matters isn't voluntary – while Esperanza tries to cling to a childhood that she's not really ready to leave behind, she's threatened by sexual violence as soon as she enters adolescence. Esperanza is forcibly initiated into the world of sex when a group of boys rapes her at a carnival.

THE THEME OF GENDER Esperanza is not a big fan of the gender roles that keep women in her community oppressed. Men on Mango Street beat their wives and daughters and confine them to the home. Just being a women is sometimes cause enough for abuse – a fact that we observe in the beatings that Sally constantly receives, and in Esperanza's rape. Esperanza offers us a critique of the way men and women relate to one another, and refuses to conform to the expectations placed on her sex by getting married or even acting in a feminine way. For our protagonist, defying gender roles and remaining independent is an act of rebellion, and a source of power.

THEME OF WOMEN AND FEMININITY Women occupy a central role in The House on Mango Street. Almost all of the major characters are women, and the protagonist's understanding of her own femininity motivates much of the story. Esperanza perceives beauty to be a major source of feminine power, and she admires and envies beauty in her female relatives and friends. But she also notices that beauty is not an infallible weapon, and that it can backfire – the beautiful women in the novel are often the ones who suffer the most at the hands of men. In her struggle to define her own femininity in a society that is often oppressive to women, Esperanza seeks new forms of feminine power – ones that will allow her to maintain her independence.

THEME OF FRIENDSHIP For a girl who feels as isolated as Esperanza does, making friends becomes an urgent and persistent goal. The House on Mango Street deals with the theme of friendship as Esperanza struggles to form connections with her peers and thinks about what her relationships mean. Esperanza experiences a wide variety of friendships over the course of the novel that seem to increase in intensity and meaning. From the obligatory time spent babysitting her little sister, to the spontaneous connections made with neighborhood girls over a shared bicycle, to the empathy and advice offered to her by Alicia, Esperanza grows more and more mature in her friendships.

THEME OF DREAMS,HOPES AND PLANS The dreams, hopes and plans of the characters in The House on Mango Street are often symbolized by a house. For Esperanza's Mama and Papa, the idea of happiness and security is summed up in the image of a white house, big enough for their whole family. They pass this dream down to their children, but Esperanza takes it and makes it her own – her dream becomes having a house all to herself, in which she can be free to write.

THEME OF FAMILY Esperanza's relationship with her family provides her with a sense of belonging – even when she does her best to deny it. Like a lot of adolescents, Esperanza doesn't always feel close to her family. She thinks her little sister Nenny is a drag, she rolls her eyes at her parents' long-shot dreams of winning the lottery, and part of her hates going to visit her sick aunt in her smelly old apartment. But every once in a while, Esperanza betrays her feelings of love and connectedness to the people she's related to. Esperanza's connection to her family is a major reason she ends up feeling like she does – at least part of the time – belong to the house on Mango Street.

THE HOUSE ON THE MANGO SETTING The setting is central to The House on Mango Street – after all, it's even mentioned in the title. Esperanza and her family have just moved to a poor, mostly Latino neighborhood in a city that's commonly understood to be Chicago, the author's hometown. A few contextual clues, like the car Louie steals and the song Marin is constantly singing to herself, probably establish the time period as the late 1960s (see "Allusions" for a list of cultural references from the book).

THE HOUSE ON THE MANGO SETTING You might notice that very little of Esperanza's story actually takes place within the house on Mango Street. For the most part the action happens elsewhere in the neighborhood – on the street with her friends, on Edna's back porch, in Gil's junk shop, up in the tree in Meme's backyard, at school, and in the monkey garden next door. This has the effect of suggesting that Esperanza's community plays a large part in establishing what is, for her, Mango Street – a place that she will eventually come to see as home.

THE HOUSE ON THE MANGO SETTING Esperanza's freedom to run around the neighborhood is a marker of her independence, and distinguishes her from the number of women in the community who are confined to the home. Whether it's because their husbands prohibit them from leaving, because they're tied down by familial obligations, or, as in the case of Mamacita, because they are prisoners of their own foreignness and fear, several female characters are trapped within their houses or apartments. By the time we read about Sally in "Linoleum Roses," the domestic setting has become a symbol for the freedom that women in the novel give up by marrying.