The House On Mango Street

Novel:The House On Mango Street

Author: Sandra Cisneros

Analysis&Quote:

“All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.”

The chapter, Those Who Don’t is important because it highlights the importance of differences that the protagonist, Esperanza, recognizes at such a young age. It isn’t said explicitly how old she is but I can assume she’s pretty young.

Specifically, I think the last paragraph I important because the author flips gears and turned to how the “brown” people act when they go into a different neighborhood of another color and even class. I decided to focus on this quote/chapter because I feel like it says a lot about how children of a lower-income and/or minority catch onto differences quickly.

The title of the chapter already gives way to some type of difference by using the word “those”. It isn’t “those people” or “people who don’t understand”, but “those”. Most often people use those to describe objects or things, but in this case when it is applied to people it gives the idea that they are one monolith and that they can easily be generalized and group together as one thing. And what I also find interesting is how when the author then describes “those” people in the first sentence, I got a sense of who she was talking about. Or at least based on the characters background and history of the U.S, it becomes clear who “those” people are. Or maybe my own perceptions are clouding who I perceive as “those”.

The next three sentences in the first paragraph that follow depicts the character’s naivety but also gives way to the prejudice society she lives in. She describes what she thinks “those” people think of her and the other “brown” people. But, it can be assumed she’s never interacted with people of the other color and already has her opinions formed about “those” people and what they think of her. (I also find it interesting because it reminds me of how John Bellew hated black people in Passing but never talked to a black person.) This is evident from the last paragraph when she says, “But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight.” By paralleling the phrase, “They think” it becomes reinforced that Esperanza thinks of “those” people as one big clump. As they roll up their windows and keep their eyes straight, they don’t give themselves the chance to even physically not separate themselves from the “other” people.

The last sentence in the first paragraph even suggest that “those” people don’t seek out neighborhoods like those or voluntarily search for places like Mango Street. “They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.” But it also shows how perhaps, she thinks where she lives is worth nothing and that it’s no place of importance if people don’t seek it out. Overall, I think this paragraph goes to show that the society she lives in in the novel (and can even be said for our society as well) creates stereotypes about certain people particularly when it comes to race.

In the second paragraph, I feel that Cisneros sort of feeds into the stereotypical street characters in low-income neighborhoods by the way Esperanza describes the people on the block. We know the guy with the crooked eye is Davey the Baby’s brother, and the tall one next to him in the straw brim, that’s Rosa’s Eddie V., and the big one that looks like a dumb grown man, he’s Fat Boy, though he’s not fat anymore nor a boy.” This sentence also provides another degree of separation from “those” people by saying “we” as if everything she mentions that follows is common knowledge. Although, Cisneros does portray in the typical street characters, I feel that it does come from a true place. Personally, in my neighborhood, on my street, there were certain ways to describe people. For example, further down my street is “The Candy Lady” who sold almost every candy including pickles, and if you went further up there is “The Bunny Lady” who had two bunnies. There is “Malcom X” who is super into black power, “Miss Anne’s daughter (fill in blank)”, and “Wanda and them”. So I feel that although it does seem to romanticize the working and lower-income class more, it’s not completely made up.

I really love the last paragraph because it describes how they act when they go into “those” people’s neighborhoods. But I also think it’s important to note how Esperanza says, “our car windows get rolled up” because it suggest that it’s not her that’s creating this separation but rather the parents or adults. By doing these little things they make it clear that there needs to be separation and it almost exacerbates the obvious differences between them and “those people”. I also love this paragraph because I feel most authors that write from a minority’s perspective fail to mention how they too separate themselves from people not like them. Granted that they usually were somehow institutionally separated or were pushed to the fringes of society.

The very last sentence, “That is how it goes and goes”, feels like an understatement to me. Esperanza thinks “those people” think that she and other people like her will “attack them with shiny knives” and she basically says this is the circle of life. This is how things work. Something else I also thought was interesting was how “those” people she is describing could use this same argument/ perspective about them. That “those” people could say they assume certain things about them but it’s not true.

Other quotes that I really liked so far are:

pg.11- “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.”

-I found this quote interesting because I like the imagery and I felt it may foreshadow something in the future for Esperanza.

pg.13- “Then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad.”

 “In the meantime they’ll just have to move a little farther north from Mango Street, a little farther away every time people like us keep moving in.”

-This quote was interesting because it seems that her “friend” sort of represents “those” people, and at a young age her friend has an understanding that people like Esperanza are no good. Also, again the girl’s family is moving north and not south. I wonder again why the south is always viewed as bad and the north as some type of haven.