Esperanza's Future

      The future holds many things, some of which are success. Hovever, in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza leaves her home on Mango street hoping to return one day to "come back" for the ones she "left behind". I think that Esperanza is leaving so she can go get an education to better prepare herself so that she can help the people she left behind on Mango Street.
      I think Esperanza's future holds success in education. Esperanza is going to go to school to get educated and then come back for the friends and family she left on Mango Street. This is exemplified when she says, "One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango... They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out." (Cisneros p.110). Esperanza is leaving because she does not belong there. She is going to do this so that one day in the future she can come back and help the people who don't have the ability to leave. Most of Esperanza's neighbors probably have never been outside of Mango Street and lived there their whole life. Unlike her neighbors, Esperanza has moved around a couple of times so she knows places to go such as schools outside of Mango Street. Getting an education is the best decision Esperanza has made for herself.
      Esperanza has plans for her future. Esperanza has never really belonged to Mango Street, this is shown when she says, "No, this isn't my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I've lived here. I don't belong" (Cisneros, p106) Throughout the story Esperanza kept saying that she did not belong to Mango Street. Esperanza feels like she doesn't belong because the people there are so different from her. I think that Esperanza is saying that she belongs to a place where she can start her own life and make decisions for herself. This is why Esperanza is going to go to school. I predict that Esperanza plans to go to school, get a job, buy her own house, live there for a while and relax, then come back for the friends and family she left behind. For example, Esperanza says,

 "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all to my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem. (Cisneros p108)

Esperanza wants her own house, with her own rules and her own things. I think that this is a goal Esperanza set up for herself. She is doing this because when she leaves Mango Street she has an incentive for going to school. Esperanza going to get educated and get a degree so she can get a job. Once she gets a job she is going to work hard. After a couple of years Esperanza is going to buy a new house, a house of her own. After that she is going to relax a bit. Finally after she accomplishes all of that, she is going to go back to Mango Street and help the people she left behind. Esperanza is very determined to succeed, and that determination is going to fuel her for the upcoming years in her life.
      The future is currently unpredictable, but I predict that Esperanza's future holds lots of hardships and success. Esperanza is planning to leave Mango Street to get education then eventually buy a new house. After she succeeds in getting all of these she will finally "come back" for the ones she "left behind" on Mango Street. Esperanza's need to leave Mango Street will be the spark that will eventually light up success.

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.