K. Saul
5/18/18
Linguistic Symbols in ​A House on Mango Street:
Style and The Theme of Independence
Adolescence is a bridge between childhood and adulthood, marked by often awkward and
painful attempts by the tween to create order out of chaos and emerge with with a coherent identity.
The coming-of-age story is a genre of literature that focuses on this journey from immaturity to
maturity, and Sandra Cisneros’s Esperanza​ ​shares her progress in the classic coming-of-age tale,
The House on Mango Street. E
​ speranza goes from an insecure and lonely girl to a more independent
young woman who is confident in her identity as a writer. To highlight Esperanza’s growth, Cisneros
uses a variety of narrative techniques: as Esperanza changes, so does the way she narrates.
Cisneros develops the theme of independence through the significance of words: the symbolism of
names, language, and writing represents the evolution of Esperanza’s autonomy.
At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza seeks her own identity, and her longing is manifested
by her desire for a new name, and a stylistic listing of options that she’d like to replace her own. She
hopes that a new name will reveal “the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or
Maritza or Zeze the X” (11). Esperanza lists these options as potential identities; each one contains a
secret, bolder, wilder girl inside of it, and she longs for the independence she imagines a new name
and its corresponding identity would bring her. Later, when she meets Rachel and Lucy, Esperanza’s
desperation for friends leaves her anxious and insecure during their first interaction. When Rachel
asks for Esperanza’s name, she thinks, “I wish my name was Cassandra or Alexis or Maritza —
anything but Esperanza” (15). Esperanza wishes for a new name that she childishly believes will
bring with it a new bold identity.
Many of the characters in ​The House on Mango Street w
​ ho are the least independent do not
speak the English language, and Esperanza tells about them using questions to represent
uncertainty. When Esperanza learns the fate of Geraldo, the man Marin dances with who dies in a
hit-and-run, she is struck by how powerless and disrespected he is: “No address. No name.
Nothing in his pockets” (66). His “namelessness,” caused by his lack of legal identification and
status, has made him invisible. Esperanza questions his situation, wondering, “But what difference
does it make? He wasn’t anything to her. He wasn’t her boyfriend or anything like that. Just
another ​brazer ​who didn’t speak English... And what was she doing out at three a.m. anyway?
Marin, who was sent home with her coat and some aspirin. How does she explain? (66).
Esperanza knows that Geraldo’s lack of English has made him nameless and faceless in the
system: “just another” as she explains. She expresses her frustration over Geraldo’s
powerlessness and demise through a series of questions that cannot be answered: “What
difference does it make?... How does she explain?” Similarly, Mamacita is helpless because she
does not speak English. While Geraldo’s lack of English keeps him from being treated with the
dignity and urgency that he deserves, Mamacita’s keeps her from the entire world outside of her
apartment. Esperanza observes that Mamacita “doesn’t come out because she is afraid to speak
English” (77), realizing that the language barrier represents for Mamacita total isolation, complete
dependence, and profound homesickness as she yearns for the Spanish language of her home.
Esperanza captures Mamacita’s longing questions: “¿​Cuándo, cuándo, cuándo?” ​(78). Unlike in
“Geraldo, No Last Name,” Mamacita’s questions ​are​ answered, as her man tells her they are never
going back, that this new, dark, cold, incomprehensible country “​is h
​ ome” (78). Neither Geraldo or
Mamacita have the independence to access opportunity in America due to the language barrier
that leaves them, and Esperanza, questioning why.
At the end of the novel, Esperanza’s newfound independence is accompanied with her
self-identification as a writer and the change in narrative style marked by the more consistent use
of complete, figuratively sophisticated sentences. Cisneros hints at the freedom life as a writer will
provide for Esperanza in “Born Bad,” when Aunt Lupe tells her “You must keep writing. It will keep
you free,” though Esperanza admits that “at that time I didn’t know what she meant” (61). Later,
she realizes the power that writing holds to provide both emotional and situational freedom.
Esperanza shares that she puts her story “down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so
much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms.
She sets me free” (110). Esperanza sees that writing frees her from the painful memories of her
childhood and will also help her escape from Mango Street and towards the freedom of
opportunities in the larger world. As her identity as a writer strengthens, she acknowledges that
her literary life will take her away from Mango: “One day I will pack my books and paper. One day I
will say goodbye to Mango” (110), and will give her the strength to come back to Mango, as well.
Esperanza is writing her story, and fighting her “ghost,” with more poetic, writerly sentences, saying
“I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes, I say, ‘And so she trudged up the
wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never liked’” (109). Esperanza’s
correct usage of quotation marks for the first time in the novel; her specific, descriptive language
(“trudged,” “​wooden s​ tairs,” “​sad brown ​shoes”); and her use of personification reflect her complete
identification of herself as a writer, and identify which will bring her independence.
Cisneros masterfully crafts a novel in which style echoes theme and emphasizes the motif of
writing and language as independence, which must be dear to the author’s own evolution and
identity. Esperanza’s journey is not universal, but her quest for a secure identity is the lynchpin of
growing up, and her conclusion that writing is equal to freedom and self-expression is the same
conclusion that writers across the world share.