Salim 1 Areeb Salim Mr Woodard English 10 1 9 January 2015 Themes Essay The House on Mango Street Our modern era consists of pain caused by words wars caused by words and peace caused by words Rewinding back to the 1960s this conflict of words would have been identical to todays if not worse The House on Mango Street piloted an intention of which mainly concludes of racism sexism and a binary society All these being leading factors of today s main world complications Although it is thought judgment due to traits which is unalterable has been extinct and not a problem for years that have passed it just may be the main problem of today s society Sandra Cisneros the author of The House of Mango Street represents many of these horrid problems years back in her book Art consists of colors may it be a dark monochrome or bright variegation Whatever color a person may be they re art which God has put his paint brush on Unfortunately many do not comprehend this idea very often In The House on Mango Street different skin colors were treated more like a pack of M Ms the color preferred is picked out first although the taste remains the same throughout all of them The hatred to where Espranza and her people came from was on the extremes Just as the cat lady mentions That s when we move away Got to Salim 2 Then as if she forgot I just moved in she says the neighborhood is getting bad Cisneros pg 12 A simple explanation would be that as more Mexicans began to move in many people believed the area began to grow corrupt or trashy Although without a doubt that there are some areas where these different people are living happily at the end fact being they are more tolerated then accepted The amount of area they can reach tolerated is certainly very low It is represented through the quote All brown all around we are safe But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight Yeah That is how it goes and goes Cisneros page 28 Concluding that racism can really be a major problem in the sad time of Ezpranza s life What is worse is when racism is available while genders are being treated different simultaneously Sexism is often misunderstood and confused with gender binary when in fact they are the same concept but not same idea While sexism revolves around the idea of discrimination towards a certain sex a gender binary is the split amongst them Sexism has existed on our planet since the beginning of time The time of Ezpranza it was common as well for example the book states And then Rafaela who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at Cisneros pg This simply can prove the point where females are looked at different than males Another point would be when Sandra writes In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away Her power is her own She will not give it away Cisneros pg Now how this would prove sexism is through the psychological idea built in her head about Salim 3 females Although it is not stated that all women are like this but since a person would first think that when a female actor is in a movie she is often a mainstream type of person so the movie looks more natural Re stating that there is a difference between a binary society and sexism I ll show you how a binary society was present during this time as well Hopefully by now your understanding on the definition of a binary society is clear The binary society is shown by Sandra through The boys and the girls live in separate worlds The boys in their universe and we in ours Cisneros pg 8 How this shows a binary is it indicates the actual separation of them unlike other quotes which just discriminate females As the sentence continues the idea is ended by Ezparanza saying My brother for example They ve gotten plenty to say to me and Nenny But outside the house they can t be Cisneros pg 8 Outside more or less they are considered to be more separated than combined since her brother doesn t really have nothing to say to her So concluding this racism sexism and a binary society are valid and present during the story Racism is shown at every other corner of the book just like Mexicans in Exparaza s area Sexism is very common and females are looked down upon Not only are the females looked down upon they are separated from a male dominant world How far could these themes take over the world Salim 4 Works Cited Cisneros Sandra The House on Mango Street New York Vision Contemporaries 1991 Print