The House on Mango Street
Category A Prompt A
Category A Prompt A
Safeeyah Iverson
A passage that I would argue embodies the main concern of the novel would be the chapter on the monkey garden. I would consider the primary theme of The House on Mango Street to be the transition from adolescent to adulthood, a theme that is explored thoroughly in the text. Although it not explicitly stated how old the protagonist, Esperanza, is, her development is trackable through the subject of the chapters which grow increasingly more complex and mature as the book advances. The Monkey Garden chapter could then be seen to represent the moment where the character becomes aware of the separation between adolescence and adulthood and the chapters before and after it are markedly different.
The Monkey Garden is
initially representative of childhood, existing as a playground of sorts, an
idyllic junk yard where the youth of Mango Street can hide away, quite
literally. Esperanza talks about wanting to run through the garden “fast as the
boys, not like Sally who screamed if she got her stockings muddy” and when she tries
to convince Sally to join her she is told to “Play with the kids if you want”.
Here a clear distinction is made between the kids who jump from broken car to
broken car and hide within the wild flowers and weeds of the garden and the
teenagers who stand by the curb sharing “a joke I didn’t get”.
This discovery
of a game unlike the ones Esperanza has played before, a game where the
boys create the rules, presents the first clear distinction of power, placing it in the hands of the males. Prior to this chapter, although Esperanza has
witnessed many moments of the power dynamics and interactions between men and
women, it has existed separate from her immediate universe. This game of kissing
between Sally, Tito, and her friends is entirely different from anything that
she has witnessed from her peers before and she is immediately alarmed. She doesn’t
understand her alarm, only has this understanding that “something wasn’t right”.
She attempts to get help for Sally from Tito’s mother, who is apathetic to
Esperanza’s alarm at the situation, understanding and recognizing it where
Esperanza is unable to. She attempts to rescue
her friend, innately aware perhaps that something is shifting and afraid
because of it. When she attempts her rescue however, she realizes that she has
misread the situation, describing that they “all looked at me as if I was the one that was crazy and made me
feel ashamed.” This is the moment where Esperanza is aware of her own
immaturity and so also the moment that she begins to mature. She feels
displaced by the experience, that her feet “seemed far away. They didn’t seem
to be my feet anymore: and that the garden which “had been such a good place to
play didn’t seem mine either”.
Hi Safeeyah,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great close reading of the text. Yes, in so many ways the Monkey Garden chapter is the pivotal turning point of the collection. You are spot-on in your analysis that it is first introduced as an idyllic play-space of childhood but it becomes something else in this scene. It's important to note that gender is not a factor among the "kids" jumping on the cars, but it very much becomes a factor for the teenagers, and you are right to note that their game is a power play that places power in the hands of males. I would say there are elements of sexual assault in this scene in which the girls are denied the agency to consent or say no, and in many ways this scene foreshadows the later sexual assault scene at the carnival.