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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 1: The House on Mango Street
Explanation and Analysis—Feel Like Nothing:
Cisneros makes use of a simile to describe how Esperanza feels when a nun from her school incredulously asks where she lives:
Where do you live? she asked. There, I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there? There. I had to look to where she pointed—the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn’t fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there.
The simile "made me feel like nothing" is both casual and heavy-hitting, with Esperanza feeling as if she's less than a person—less than anything, literally nothing—after this interaction with an adult from her school. Cisneros's italicization of there paints a vivid picture of how the nun might have sounded when talking to Esperanza. The italicization, in emphasizing there, further highlights the othering of Esperanza that is occurring at this moment: she literally lives there, as in not here.
This moment highlights how much the house on Mango Street isn't the dream house the family imagined at the start of the novel, creating a relatable moment for readers who recognize just how hard it can be to achieve your dreams. It also makes the conclusion of the novel, in which Esperanza dreams of her own home, more poignant. More than anything, the simile is an example of the othering Esperanza and her family experiences frequently, and the negative feelings produced by that othering.
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Chapter 2: Hairs
Explanation and Analysis—Hair:
Esperanza uses a series of similes to describe her and her family's hair, culminating in rich imagery that conveys the sweet smell of her mother's hair:
My Papa’s hair is like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy... my mother’s hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring.
By describing the hair of Esperanza's family members through increasingly abstract similes, Cisneros highlights difference amongst similarity. In many ways, this is one of the novel's through-lines, and it highlights the differences between the Chicano characters who are all a part of a broader community.
The specific similes Cisneros uses both call back to Esperanza's culture and create a visceral image of what her mother's hair smells and looks like. Rosettes are rose-shaped ornaments or decorations, as well as a term for a popular desert in many cultures, including Spanish and Mexican holiday celebrations. Regardless of what precisely Esperanza is referring to with her simile, it conveys both what the hair looks like and what it smells like: warm bread and candy circles. Her mom's hair becomes warmth, love, and sweetness. These things represent her personality and role in Esperanza's life more than a literal description of how her hair looks. Ultimately, Cisneros's similes create a connection between Esperanza's physical heritage and her cultural heritage and memories.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4: My Name
Explanation and Analysis—Esperanza:
Esperanza explains both what her name literally means—hope—as well as what it figuratively means, making use of both metaphor and simile to do so:
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.
The fact that Esperanza's name means hope aligns with the overarching theme of the novel, which centers around her hope: hope for a better life, for her own home, for friends, and for the ability to fit in. By juxtaposing what her name means in English with what it means to her, Esperanza's complicated and out-of-place feelings about her own culture and heritage are revealed. When she metaphorically suggests that the name means "sadness" and "waiting," it becomes clear that her relationship with her name—and, perhaps, with the concept of hope itself—is more complicated than it might seem at first. Hope, after all, requires a certain kind of patience, as one waits for whatever it is they hope for. In a way, Esperanza shows that she embodies her name, hoping for a future that is better than her present. Her name, like something that is "muddy," may only be temporarily undesirable, and with time might be something she views more favorably.
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Chapter 8: Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold
Explanation and Analysis—Music Box:
In a junk store that she often frequents, Esperanza and Nelly encounter a music box that is so beautiful it can only be described through simile, although the store owner ironically refuses to sell it:
Then he starts it up and all sorts of things start happening. It’s like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture and swan-neck shadows and in our bones. It’s like drops of water. Or like marimbas only with a funny little plucked sound to it like if you were running your fingers across the teeth of a metal comb.... This, the old man says shutting the lid, this ain’t for sale.
Esperanza's transcendent musical experience requires consecutive similes to explain. The use of similes conveys Esperanza's childlike perspective on the world: when she has these amazing and new experiences, she struggles to explain them without gesturing towards other, more familiar experiences.
The moment is also one of situational irony, as the man who owns the junk store doesn't want to sell the music box to two children who frequently browse the store. Considering that the man owns a store, where he attempts to sell antique and thrifted items for profit, the fact that he won't sell a music box is ironic and counterintuitive. By refraining from selling the music box, the man suggests that some things are more important than money: namely, experiences and memories. For the owner of the store, this unassuming box is more important than the money he could sell it for, almost certainly because its music evokes positive memories for him (similar to the Spanish music Esperanza's dad listens to as he shaves). The House on Mango Street urges readers to privilege experiences above all else, and this instance of figurative language is one example of what doing so might look like.
Chapter 13: There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Falling Star:
After describing the Vargas family, whose single mother Rosa can not keep total control or track of each child, Esperanza casually describes the death of Angel Vargas with a simile:
No wonder everybody gave up. Just stopped looking out when little Efren chipped his buck tooth on a parking meter and didn’t even stop Refugia from getting her head stuck between two slats in the back gate and nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut, just like a falling star, and exploded down to earth without even an “Oh.”
Whether an intentional suicide or an accidental death, Angel Varas kills himself by jumping off a building. Cisneros employs two similes to describe the act, comparing Angel to "a falling star" and "a sugar donut." The terrible, heart-wrenching death of a child is described through the eyes of a child. The similes lend a positive tilt to the incredibly negative experience, perhaps because Esperanza herself does not fully comprehend what has happened. The two similes play off of each other, with the dichotomy between Angel "learning to fly" and yet having "exploded down on earth" figuratively heightening the fall.
The death is described by Cisneros as a collective failure of the community: it "isn't her fault" because Rosa has too much to do as a single mom. Rather, it was everyone else who got "tired" of paying attention to the children all of the time. This communal sharing of blame is compounded by the "falling star" simile, which transforms Angel into a part of nature and his death into an inevitability: just a consequence of the situation he was born into.
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Chapter 38: The Monkey Garden
Explanation and Analysis—Forgetful Monkey Garden:
Esperanza personifies the monkey garden, a whimsical and magical junk-filled garden, through simile:
Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them.
The Monkey Garden is far from the first place to be personified in the story: the house on Mango Street, for instance, holds its breath. By comparing the garden to a person eating lost items or a forgetful old man, Esperanza makes the garden more magical than it is in actuality. While in reality nothing can truly disappear into the garden—things can get lost or forgotten but not completely disappear—Esperanza positions the garden as something that consumes and engulfs everything in its vicinity.
The fact that Esperanza highlights these properties of the garden in particular calls attention to her desire to be engulfed (and thus forgotten) herself, as she lies down in the garden after a mortifying experience with Sally. After trying to protect Sally from getting exploited by the boys, Esperanza is made to feel "crazy," so she tries to get swallowed up by the garden. This act is emphasized by Esperanza's personification of the garden into that which could actually swallow her. Esperanza, wanting to disappear, attempts to permanently fix herself in space. This counterintuitive act makes Esperanza's dream of leaving her neighborhood that much more powerful. For Esperanza, to be forgotten would be to remain where she is forever. Esperanza concludes that the monkey garden "didn't seem mine either": more than anything, Esperanza wants a physical space she can make her own and where she can be herself.
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