A Need to Grow Up

Esperanza’s tones of admiration and compassion towards Sally in Cisneros’s passage reflect her respect for an outwardly mature girl, but also her sadness over Sally’s troubled home life. Esperanza is trapped in the awkward pre-teen years where she is just barely noticing changes in herself and those around her such Sally. On the other hand, Sally’s family issues make Esperanza compare herself on a more personal level with Sally as she wonders if she too wants to leave Mango Street.

Esperanza often compares Sally’s adult features to much grander objects and people through similes and metaphors that effectively portray her desire to be like Sally. Esperanza immediately speaks of how Sally’s “eyes [are] like Egypt” and how she “flips her hair back like a satin shawl.” These exaggerations are often accompanied by phrases like “will you teach me” and “who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra?” Esperanza looks to Sally as a model of what she would like to be, but does not have the courage to leave her childhood completely behind.

Cisneros uses repetition not only to emphasize certain words or ideas, but also to show the child-likeness of Esperanza as she begins to realize Sally is not as different from her as she thought she was. She begins to feel sorry for the girl who is trapped on Mango Street and has “nobody.” The word “nobody” is repeated in the end of the passage while Esperanza describes how Sally must wish “nobody” would hurt her, judge, her, or make her sad. Also, Sally’s laugh is used to portray both tones of admiration and later compassion. In the beginning, Sally “the boys think she’s beautiful” and she “laughs.” To Esperanza her laugh signifies the joys of being a woman who is noticed and admired by men. However, when Sally leaves school, she “pull[s] her skirt straight” “rub[s] the blue paint off [her] eyelids, and does not “laugh” anymore. It is here that Esperanza realizes that, behind her faзade, Sally is as lost and confused as she is. In the end all Sally wants is “to love and to love