In the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the thematic motif of freedom and entrapment is portrayed throughout the book by stories of her home life, school life, and even life with friends.
In the first section of the book, there are two stories that she wrote that really spoke to me about freedom and entrapment. The first story I chose is Boys and Girls because it clearly conveys to the reader how trapped Esperanza is. “Someday I will have a best friend…tied to an anchor” (Cisneros 9) proves how she longs to have friends but can’t because she is a “red balloon” that is “tied to an anchor” (9). The red balloon portrays Esperanza as someone who longs to be free and float away, but is tied down like balloons usually are. Another short story I chose was My Name because Esperanza realizes that she will only be herself and is trapped. She finds out that she is “always Esperanza” (11) and that she can be no one else. In both of these examples, Esperanza is trapped and is not free.
The second section of the book has two quotes of entrapment. In the story Alicia Who Sees Mice, Alicia is trapped. Alicia is trapped because her “mama died…a factory or behind a rolling pin” (31-32) and she has to do a wife’s work in the house, but she also wants to go to college. She wants to go to college so she won’t be trapped just like her mama was. In Chanclas, Esperanza at first felt trapped, but at the end of the dance felt free. Her family is poor, so Esperanza has to wear the only pair of shoes she has to a dance with a pretty new dress that she got. She felt like “everybody [was] laughing at [her]…He watched [her] dance” (47-48), which portrays how she first felt like she was trapped, but then became free as she danced. Alicia was trapped while Esperanza was trapped and then freed.
The third section of the story is mainly about freedom, especially the two quotes I chose to put in this section. The first quote from this section is from A House of My Own. Esperanza desperately wants a house that’s “Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a…clean as paper before the poem” (108) so she can feel free. When she has a house of her own, she will feel free because she can say that it is her own house and no one else’s. The last quote is from the short story Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes. Esperanza will “one day pack [her] bags of…For the ones who cannot out” (110) and will be free and try to help the ones who are still trapped. She is free and will always be free, but will come back to her friends and family who are trapped and will always be trapped. In the third section, Esperanza dreams of being free and expresses her feelings throughout it.
The thematic motif of freedom and entrapment is in the book many times, and it portrays how we are trapped and free in some of the same situations that Esperanza is. Therefore, freedom and entrapment is a major thematic motif.