Esperanza feels trapped by poverty because her family could not buy the kind of house that she could feel proud of. Esperanza’s family had always talked about heir dream house that they planned they would own a t some point. “This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.” (p.4) On Sundays, which was Papa’s day off, the family would go out and look at the nice houses on the hill. “I am tired of looking at what we can’t have. When we win the lottery... Mama begins, and then I stop listening.” (p.86) Esperanza soon got sick of looking at all the n

The last trap that Esperanza views within her neighborhood is lack of education. Mamacita and her family moved into an apartment on Mango Street. She is very homesick and wants to go back home, but can’t. She doesn’t leave her apartment very much because of the fact she just wants to go home. “Somebody said because she’s too fat, somebody because of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she doesn’t come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since she only knows eight words.” (p. 77) She does not want to improve her English vocabulary in fear of loosing her hope of ever going back home. Esperanza saw something similar within her own home. Her father didn’t even know eight words when he first came to the country. “My father says when he came to this country he ate hammandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hammandeggs. That was the only word he knew.” (p.77) Esperanza’s mother doesn’t want her to end up entrapped by lack of education and strongly suggests that she goes on and gets a better education. Some people choose not to get an education and some have no choice, but Esperanza is going to try to get the education that her mother wants her to have.

ice houses: it just made her more upset and ashamed of her own house. Esperanza tells herself that she will get out of Mango Street and own her own house that she can be proud to go home to. Rosa Vargas is even worse off. Not only did she not have the money for a better house; she barely has the money to feed all of her children. She “...cries every day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar for bologna or a note explaining how come.” (p.29) As a result, Rosa had to spend most of her money on food and could not afford a new or better house, so she is “trapped” within her own house, too.

Some topics in this essay:
Mango Street, Rosa Vargas, Esperanza Throughout, Minerva Rafael, Sally Sally, Sundays Papa’s, Street Esperanza, Sandra Cisneros, mango street, lack education, own house, , house proud, life trap, throughout book, nice houses, esperanza views, poverty family, inherited name,