Symbols

      Throughout The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros leaves many significant, but subtle representations of how the characters feel in the story. These symbols are used in a wide array and usually represent more than one idea. Some of the objects include shoes, windows, the color red/pink, and trees. One symbol that stood out to me was the trees. Cinseros writes about the trees on numerous occasions throughout the novel.
      I think that the trees represent the will to keep on going. 

Cisneros states, “Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city…Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep (p.74)”.

These trees inspire Esperanza to keep on going. The trees also represent the situation in which Esperanza got put into when her family moved to Mango St. She moved to a place in which she doesn’t belong. Esperanza is a new stranger to this neighborhood just like the trees. They are both very similar to each other. Four slim, skinny trees were planted by the city in a foreign environment, they look weak and hopeless yet they keep on growing and pushing though. The trees secretly anchor themselves with their roots and keep on growing. This is what Esperanza does. She adjusts to the foreign environment and keeps on growing herself.
      Another symbol that the trees might stand for is that they are a source of comfort and can be a place where Esperanza can go to let out her emotions without anyone judging her. This is exemplified when Cisneros writes, “And then I don’t know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn’t mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn’t, but I did (p.97)”. The trees are a place where Esperanza can go to relieve stress and let out her feelings without feeling the odd one out. There is no other place where Esperanza can go without someone disturbing her or making fun of her. The trees act like a safe house where she can hide and let out her feelings. 

Another example would be when Esperanza says, " But what you remember most is this tree, huge, with fat arms and mighty families of squirrels in the higher branches. All around, the neighborhood of roofs, black-tarred and A-framed, and in their gutters, the balls that never came back down to earth. Down at the base of the tree, the dog with two names barks into the empty air, and there at the end of the block, looking smaller still, our house with its feet tucked under like a cat. (Cisneros p.22)".

This shows that the trees sort of "protects" their house and is a place where other creatures can go to live. The trees are what Esperanza remembers the most thus making them very significant to her. I think the trees also represent the comfort she feels when feeling down.
      In conclusion, the symbols Cisneros includes in her piece creates a unique experience for the reader. In this case, the trees symbolize the comfort Esperanza feels when she is feeling bad, they are also a place where she can go to let out her emotions. Esperanza is also similar to the trees because there were four weak looking trees that were planted but still kept going. They represent the emotions Esperanza feels after moving to the house on Mango Street.