Essay About Broken Dreams And Better Life

Fantasy or Reality
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Sometimes in life, people wish for things they do not have. No
matter how hard people wish on a star or on a candle, the wishes never seemed to be
answered. Everyone has felt that bitter disappointment on Christmas morning when
they finally realize that they were never going to be able to get what they wanted.
This is the same exact feelings that the characters in Cisneros The House on
Mango Street. Unlike us, the disappointment for these characters last
throughout their childhood. Esperanza, Rachel, Nenny, Sally, and Lucy are among
the kids growing up on Mango Street. They all long for friendship, love, and a
better life, but all these kids face are the harsh reality of the “real world.”
In the society that Esperanza and her friends live in, love takes a back seat
when it comes to relationships.
“Someday, I will have a best friend all my own. One I can tell my
secrets to. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain
them”(11). These are the longing words of Esperanza. While growing up on Mango
Street, Esperanza finds herself in a community that she feels she does not belong
to. With all her heart, she longs for a true friend that she can tell her
dreams to and will understand her for it. These wishes seem easy enough to
grant, but Esperanza soon finds out that there is more to friendship. “If you
give me five dollars, I will be your friend forever”(29). Esperanza discovers that
she can not have anything for nothing. Rachel and Lucy sure enough become her
friends, but only after she helped them pay for the bike. Esperanza never does
truly find a real friend who shares the same goal as she does because all the
friends she has have more problems than her. For instance, Sally was a friend
for whom Esperanza cared for. When Esperanza was raped, Sally was not there to
help her and when Esperanza tried to prevent Sally from making a mistake, Sally
told her to leave. All Esperanza wanted was a friendship that would help her
escape her life, but all she ended up with were friendships that reminded her of
her broken dreams because in her society nothing was given for free and the
people she was associated with did not have the same goals as she did.
Another one of those broken dreams was the concept of love. Esperanza
was not the only one who longed for a mans endless love. Marin, Esperanza,
Rafaela, and Sally are all “waiting for a car to stop, a star to fall, someone
to change her life”(35) These girls are all waiting for “prince charming” to come
and sweep them off their feet. They believe that the right man will come and
love them for who they are and take them away to a nice house. Marin says that
she will move in and marry her boyfriend, but the harsh reality is that she will
only be sent to a worse life. Cisneros uses the story of Rapunzel to describe
Rafaelas life. She longs to be free of the “tower” and do as she pleases, but
all she gets is a husband who keeps her locked up in the apartment and that is
where she will remain. In Sallys case, she wants a man to love her and she
thinks she can achieve that by using her body. Sally eventually gets