Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, and The Quest for Order

The Quest for Order

• Overview: The Quest for Order is a literary model that modern authors use to develop their characters. It shows how characters (especially teenagers) react to their world as they grow and discover more and more about life. It consists of four distinct stages: Innocence, loss of innocence, seeking, and resolution. Since this model was adapted from psychology, the stages may be applied to real life as well.

Stage One

• Innocence: character is in a protected world and unaware of life outside his/her “bubble;” has a false sense of order: beliefs, ideas, and values are imposed on him/her.

• Adjectives: naïve, happy, cared for, carefree, dependent, no responsibilities, sheltered, guarded, ignorant, young, fragile, shielded

 

• Symbols: church, home, parents, toys, sandbox, bottle, crib, diapers

Stage Two

 

• Loss of Innocence: Character experiences an event that challenges or shatters his/her “world” and doesn’t know exactly how to deal with it.

• Adjectives: aware, confused, shocked, chaotic, awakened, unsatisfied, scared (sometimes traumatic, but doesn’t have to be).

• Symbols: divorce, school, injury, funeral

Stage 3

• Seeking: Character questions his/her world and begins to look for freedom and independence.

• Adjectives: aggressive, experimental, questioning, learning, self-destructive, isolated, progressive, rebellious, disappointed, disapproving

• Symbols: drugs, sex, peer pressure, bedroom, fights

Stage 4

• Resolution: Character has learned how to deal with life based on his/her experiences.

• Adjectives: self-knowledgeable, satisfied, confident, understanding, relaxed, experienced 

• Symbols: career, security, home, family, safety net

Sandra Cisneros

• The House on Mango Street is, like A Raisin in the Sun, somewhat autobiographical – art and life intersect. And, like Raisin, it explores how an identity is formed.

• Esperanza’s Quest for Order parallels many of the life experiences of Sandra Cisneros

Early Years

• Born 1954 in Chicago • only daughter in a family of 6 boys• Father was son of wealthy Mexican land

owner• Mother grew up in poverty in Arizona

and Chicago• Cisneros spoke English to her mother,

Spanish to her father; so, she grew up in a bilingual, bicultural community

Between Two Worlds

Childhood in Chicago• Lived in a small, crowded

apartment

• Enrolled in Catholic school

• Felt at times like an outsider here: even though it was home, she did not look like the images on TV and she spoke a foreign language at home

• When she was 11, they made their first down payment on a home in Humboldt Park – in a Puerto Rican neighborhood

Extended Trips to Grandfather’s Large Home

• Created instability in her life – trips would be for weeks or months at a time (they would leave school and their current apartment)

• Felt like she was an outsider here: she looked like a native in Mexico, but she knew she was just a visitor

The Only Girl in a Family of Boys

• Cisneros’ father was a traditional Mexican father, believing that “daughters were meant for husbands” (Rodriguez Aranda 68).

• Her brothers formed alliances and left her alone

• Cisneros credits her mother for giving her the courage to break outside the gender expectations thrust upon her

Education

• Attended school in Chicago

• In high school, a teacher encouraged her to continue writing poetry and to edit the literary magazine

• In 1972 she enrolled at Loyola University in Chicago as an English major

• She completed her Masters of Fine Arts at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Her Writing

• Of her writing: “It wasn't as if I didn't know who I was. I knew I was a Mexican woman. But, I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, whereas it had everything to do with it! My race, my gender, and my class! And it didn't make sense until that moment, sitting in that seminar. That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn't write about.”

• She adopted a writing style purposely opposite that of her classmates, realizing that instead of being something to be ashamed of, her own cultural environment was a source of inspiration. From then on, she would write of her "neighbors, the people [she] saw, the poverty that the women had gone through.”

• Drawing on Mexican and Southwestern myths, popular culture and conversations in the city streets, Cisneros wrote to convey the lives of people with whom she identified.

Style of Writing

• Vignette - originally meant "something that may be written on a vine-leaf.” In literature, it means short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give a particular insight into a character, idea, or setting

• Writing seems simple in word choice and sentence structure – but the vignettes allow for an in-depth insight – each one is a microcosm (a world in miniature) of life

• Figurative language, imagery, and repetition are used to evoke emotional responses as well as to convey her points

• The text will use a blend of narration – first, third, stream of consciousness (giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes)

Themes Kernels in Mango

• Home

• Freedom

• Dreams

• Assimilation

• Innocence/Loss of Innocence

• Friendship

• Gender Roles

• Power of Language

• Sexuality vs. Autonomy

• Family

• Racism

• Self-definition

• Escape vs. entrapment

• Social ClassPICK ONE TO TRACE THROUGHOUT THE NOVEL