The main character Esperanza, in the book The House on Mango Street, seems to go from being a young girl with low self-confidence to being a woman looking for freedom. The House on Mango Street is the best novel since it allows every reader to take part in the life of Esperanza as she experiences life variations (Careri 20). Her character changes, and she starts adjusting her understandings of life, herself, as well as the people around her. Esperanza finally turns out to be more established and also contented in her skin.
The House on Mango Street is the best novel everybody would want to read. This is especially when in need of encouragement and assurance that you have made the right to leave someplace and make a decision of living a life away from everything you ever experienced the whole of your life. The power of words seems to be the most essential and exciting theme in this novel. Esperanza initially learns that the lack of language, mainly English, implies powerlessness, as with Mamacita, who seems to have been trapped in her house by her lack of knowledge and fearing English.
The aspect of the language adaptation stands out to me as potential avenues for my research. All through the novel, the leading role Esperanza attempts to distance herself from her Hispanic custom; Esperanza wants to run away from Mango Street, despair, poverty, as well as Chicano community which damages every woman beyond repair. Esperanza wants to achieve the “American Dream” and manage to own her own house “like the houses on T.V.” she prefers to have an American home, not the Mexican house on Mango Street. In her search for achieving her dreams, Esperanza has to make a decision of one culture over the other. The same case applies to the language, too; she has to distance herself from the Hispanic roots and Spanish tongue, to free herself from Mango Street.
Even though she was brought up in a Spanish-speaking community, Esperanza favors the English language along with voices a minor dislike to her culture. Esperanza suggests this when she articulates, “In English, my name implies hope. In Spanish, it implies a lot of letters. It means grief, and also waiting.” The meaning of her name in English is positive and pleasing, while the definition in Spanish is miserable and without giving any hope (Priewe 351). The characters in the book are depicted in the same way; the characters who are bilingual are represented in a positive light when in contrast, the Spanish speaking people have empathized or even other people making fun of them.
Most individuals in the community believe there is no way someone can choose to leave Mango Street as a result of the language barrier. On the other hand, once they decide to accept and learn English, they will no longer feel limited to live in any place (PRIYA 27). Compared to the first units, Esperanza seem to use fewer Spanish phrases towards the end of the book, which may perhaps show that she effectively achieves her dream of moving away from Mango Street. To run away from poverty, and fulfilling her dream of owning a house in America. To achieve this, one must accept to learn and speak in English.
Esperanza, who is currently a writer, identifies that a lot of stories that she writes was from Mango Street along with its residents. Putting opinions on paper and writing concepts down put distance between her and Mango Street. By writing her novel, Esperanza sets herself apart as a viewer of the scene. Esperanza manages to accept her past and moves beyond it through writing.