The Vignettes Symbolizes....

    After reading parts of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, I find that there are a lot of vignettes in the readings. The four vignettes I read was My Name, No Speak English, Rafaela, and Sally. These vignettes have many symbolic meanings.

    In the first vignette named My Name, Esperanza the narrator talked about how she recieved her name.

“ I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window” (Pg 11).

This vignette symbolizes how she does not like her name because her great-grandmother had experience lots of trouble with that name. She is scared that with that name she might have to experience the same thing as her great-grandmother. She hope that with that name she will not experience all those troubles her great-grandmother had.

    Another vignette is named No speak English, where Esperanza talked about her neighbor unable to speak English.

“ 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“ ( Pg 77).   

What I believe from this vignette show that if you don’t know how to speak English, you would not know how to face other people. When Esperanza talks about how the lady does not come out of the house because of not knowing how to speak English, it shows that without knowing how to speak English, they would lose confidence in themselves. It seems like not speaking English can be a major issue to their lives when they come to an English speaking country.

Another vignette  is named Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut & Papaya Juice on Tuesdays, where it talks about a young woman being trapped at home because of her beauty.

“Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island....” (pg 80).

A lonely woman in the house represents darkness. I find this to symbolize that living in a place with bitterness and boredom is really bad. For a woman to feel not so lonely, she tries to drink sweet drinks so then she can imagine herself being free. It is hard for her to be stuck in an empty room, so she tries to do find something to do or eat or drink to stop her feeling of loneliness and boredom.