House on Mango Street - Close Reading

How do you know? I asked.

We know, we know.

Esperanza. The one with marble hands called me aside. Esperanza. She held my face with her blue-veined hands and looked and looked at me. A long silence. When you leave you must remember always to come back, she said.

What?

When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.

In my opinion, the main concern of this novel has to do with entrapment and the feeling that, no matter what happens, a person’s fate is decided by his or her surroundings and birth. This is the case for many of the Mango Street residents. Although they live their day to day lives with autonomy and their own hopes and dreams, most understand that, ultimately, they will not have the chance to rise above their current situations. We can see this clearly with Esperanza’s parents. They tell stories to their children promising that one day the family will be able to move and live in a large house of their own, yet those stories are always predicated on them winning the lottery. Through this juxtaposition, Cisneros expresses the belief that escaping such a situation was akin to fantasy.

The passage I chose reflects this concern by displaying it concretely. It coalesces Esperanza’s unspoken desires—although she is generally melancholy, this passage is one of the few instances in which she is direct and clear about what she wants. Also, the desire to leave is highlighted by the way it’s revealed. Cisneros makes the sentiment even stronger by bouncing it off the older women. They say “we know, we know” in response to Esperanza’s silent wish and understand what it was without her even having to say it because that was their wish too when they were younger.

Finally, I think that this passage is important because it offers a didactic message. It builds up to the idea that no matter how awful someone’s roots may be, they shouldn’t just leave and never look back. Cisneros bestows a sense of responsibility onto those who have the good fortune and skills to escape, and, through the older women, says that Esperanza (and people like her) should come back for the others. This is another belief that Cisneros shows throughout the entire story (i.e. the bums in the attic vignette).

The passage works as a whole because it highlights Cisneros’s main concern and then provides a solution.