Jaime 1
Jose Jaime
Professor Parker Phillips
ENC1102
September 12, 2013
Can True Happiness Ever Be Achieved?
Happiness is defined as the state of being happy, content or satisfied. While
reading “House on Mango Street” I felt the narrator’s disappointment and unhappiness
about her current situation. The constant moving from one house to the next, each house
as worse as the last, could very well justify feelings and frustrations. Being from a low
income family myself and experiencing the feeling of displacement by moving almost
every year this story did strike a chord with me. But now many years later I own a
decent home and live in a good neighborhood yet am not completely satisfied. Can we
ever truly be happy?
Reading about the many places the narrator moved from reminded me about the
many towns and houses I moved from when I was younger. Dealing with obnoxious
landlords, bad neighborhoods and shady characters became a daily routine, but yet I
knew
I was probably better off than other people but still I was not satisfied. The narrator
describes “ using the washroom next door and caring water over in empty milk gallons”
(par. 3) brought back memories of having the power cut off and my father sneaking into
the neighbors yard to connect an extension cord to keep the refrigerator running. The
first time I saw my father do that, my parents explained to me that “this is only temporary
and one day our lights will never go off.” That gave me hope.
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Reading the passage on how the narrators father would speak of “the house Papa
talked about when he held a lottery ticket” (par4.) I can vividly see my father come home
from work every Saturday night and proclaim “This is the day our luck changes!” waving
a lotto ticket in the air as if he were trying to hail a New York City taxi cab. By now, we
have moved into a decent neighborhood and could keep the electricity on but felt a sense
of inadequacy. In one occasion, we visited a relative who lived in a two story house with
a enormous yard and a swimming pool. My parents soon were aiming for a lifestyle they
did not have but wanted. When the narrator finally gets a house to call their own, she is
not happy and neither are the parents. Even though they did not have to pay rent or deal
with annoying landlords they were not content.
In this modern era, we are programmed to believe that “He with the most toys
wins.” That while we have the basics for survival, we can never truly be happy unless we
drive a certain car, wear certain clothes or live in a certain house. After reading “House
on Mango Street”, I was reminded of a quote from the movie Pursuit of Happyness. The
quote goes “It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the
Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. And I remember thinking ‘How did he know to put the pursuit part in there?’
that maybe happiness is something we can only pursue and maybe we can never actually
have it”
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Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. “The House on Mango Street.” Backpack Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy
and Dana Gioia. 4th ed. New York: Longman, 2012. 302-303 Print.
The Pursuit of Happyness. Dir. Gabriele Muccino. Columbia Pictures, 2006