The House on Mango Street

“A red balloon tied to an anchor.” (Cisneros 9) “Her house is like cat heaven.” (Cisneros 13) “It’s like all of a sudden he let go a million

moths all over the dusty furniture.” (Cisneros 20)

“Our house with its feet tucked under like a cat.” (Cisneros 22)

“And nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut … and exploded down to earth without even an “Oh”” (Cisneros 33)

“A red balloon tied to an anchor.” (Cisneros 9)It means she feels that she is trapped and can’t get away until the wind blows her free, or someone (she mentions a best friend) lets her go.

This quote reminds us of the 1956 classic “The Red Balloon”, in which a boy befriends a free-thinking red balloon, who is looking for a friend as well.

“Her house is like cat heaven.” (Cisneros 13)Maybe she is shy, but at the same time, caring, which contributes to the idea of otherness. This could be a reason that she has so many cats at her house. She takes very good care of her cats, which leads Esperanza to call it Cat Heaven.

Stefan’s Grandmother’s friend is rumored to have many cats, possibly more than twenty, at her house/barn, because she has a connection to them, just like Cathy.

“It’s like all of a sudden he let go a million moths all over the dusty furniture.” (Cisneros 20)This is her description of when the music box starts playing. She describes the sound as sudden and rather loud. It is so sudden because she thought it would be a different music box, like the ones she describes with ballerinas.This had a negative connotation, we wouldn’t want to listen to something that sounds like a bunch of moths.

“Our house with its feet tucked under it like a cat.” (Cisneros 22)This is probably alluding to the fact that their house is like a cat, with its compactness and size. It seems not as elegant, almost shy, like a cat, compared to the other houses.

The image makes us feel as if the house is a miniature version of another house.

“And nobody looked up not once the day Angel Vargas learned to fly and dropped from the sky like a sugar donut … and exploded down to earth without even an “Oh”” (Cisneros 33)This is a hyperbole of a situation that would happen if one of Rosa Vargas’s kids would learn to fly and fell, because their disregard for rules and common sense has caused people to stop caring when they injure themselves in an accident.

Our reaction to this quote is to questionwhy Cisneros would describe the actionof falling as like a sugar donut.

Why does Cisneros use these specific metaphors and descriptive language?

It serves as a means to enhance the story that the readers are reading and to keep them interested

Does Sandra Cisneros excessively use figurative language? Why or why not?