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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Cisneros's stylistic choice to make The House on Mango Street a series of vignettes is a significant one. Each chapter becomes a fragment of Esperanza's life, sharing her journey through adolescence only in bits and pieces. The consecutive short stories allow for specific, quotidian experiences to be just as important and central to the narrative as more obviously significant ones, highlighting a wide swath of Esperanza's formative moments. Furthermore, by having each chapter stand on its own as a short story, the novel is that much more digestible for readers, with each chapter having some sort of beginning, middle, and end.
The story is written from a first-person limited point of view, with the world of the story almost always seen through Esperanza's eyes. Thus, The House on Mango Street is narrated by someone with a childlike innocence and wonder, a narrator who doesn't have a full grasp of certain elements of the world. One example of this naivety is Esperanza's confusion over the nature of the women who visit her neighbor Earl at night (the reader, but not Esperanza, can deduce that they are sex workers). Cisneros also doesn't set off quotes with quotation marks, which makes the novel flow from thought to quote with ease and keeps the reader focused on Esperanza and her mind.
Cisneros's prose is almost poetic, inspired by her background as a poet and creating a highly readable yet image-filled text. She makes use of frequent and creative similes, which help convey the perspective of a child's growing understanding of the world, as the narrator has brand-new experiences that she can only compare to that which she already knows. Cisneros also employs frequent allusions to the unique experience of Mexican Americans growing up in the United States, be it through using a Spanish-inspired dialect or through direct references to Mexican American cultural customs.
Related Themes:
