“The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros is a story about Esperanza and her life

and the lives of others on Mango Street. In the vignettes “Born Bad” and “And Some More”,
Esperanza faces trying to figure out her identity. Esperanza improves her identity based on her
past experiences and mistakes in order to become more at ease with herself.

In “And Some More”, Esperanza realizes that friendship is an important part of the
development of her being a good person. Her immature relationship with her friends in the
beginning is highlighted with the use of clouds as symbols when one of Esperanza’s friends
states,“That’s cumulus too. They’re all cumulus today. Cumulus, cumulus, cumulus. No, she
says, that there is Nancy, otherwise known as Pig-eye” Cumulus clouds symbolize a sense of
unclearness. Clouds usually hold something hidden inside that you do not know unless it starts
snowing or rains and cumulus can either be an indicator of good weather or can turn into storm
clouds. Her friends are unsure about what the names of each cloud is and start assigning them
fictional names to try to figure it out. The assigning of names symbolizes the assigning of traits
that define yourself. Additionally, as they progress through the naming and start arguing with
each other about it they realize that their argument is not going to help them well in deciding
who they want to be when they say, “That’s stupid. Bebe, Blanca, Benny… Who’s stupid?
Rachel, Lucy, Esperanza, and Nenny. The outcome of the cumulus clouds has become clearer as
it has not started to rain so the weather will be nice. The group began to change the names of the
clouds from fictional people to themselves because the cloud is not a mystery anymore. That
argument was stupid to them because it wasn’t productive and they had to wait for themselves to
realize that and remember that their friendship is precious and that it helps them learn from their
mistakes.

In “Born Bad”, her experience with Aunt Lupe makes her realize the importance of
cherishing the gifts in her life. Aunt Lupe is someone who has died and Esperanza feels guilty
about what she did with her, stating, “Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be
there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray for me
too. For ourselves for each other… because of what we did to Aunt Lupe.” Aunt Lupe is a
character that has good characterization as a lot about her is learnt in a short amount of time, just
from this quote we know something bad happened to her because of Esperanza and her family.
However, Esperanza knows her mistake and knows that she should change. That experience
shaped her into a person who knows that she did bad and she should try to change her identity in
order to not stay bad even if she was born on an evil day. Before Aunt Lupe died, she made
Esperanza realize she should cherish her gift of writing: “You just keep writing Esperanza. You
must keep writing. It will keep you free.” Writing is a passion of Esperanza’s and is something
she is good at. Aunt Lupe is a character with a lot of life experience and recognized Esperanza’s
ability to write and identified it as something integral in Esperanza’s identity that Esperanza
herself didn’t realize. And so she told Esperanza to keep writing because it is something she has
control over herself and nobody else and is something that does not keep her constrained. No
constraints are important in the identity of someone because it is their identity.

All in all, the story discusses Esperanza finding and growing her identity to be
exclusively hers. It is exclusive because the experiences she faces with her friends and her Aunt
shape her to learn from her mistakes. These experiences are all unique.