The search for belonging in life is something everyone wants to achieve. Throughout our experiences, we discover new lessons that teach us who we are in this society and what we strive to be in this life. With all these lessons we have learned, let's connect the dots to understand what belonging in society is. Each of us has a unique story in our lives that helps us discover this concept of belonging. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, we see Ezparanza's discovery of belonging in her life as she grows up. Through a plethora of psychological encounters, these experiences teach Ezparanza the duality of belonging to society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The first experience we see in the book was when Ezparanza first described the house on Mango Street. She was hoping for a home that wasn't shared with other families or people who weren't part of her family. However, this did not appear to be the case when Ezparanza and his family moved to Mango Street. He brought up the fact that "the house on Mango Street is nothing like they made it out to be." (Cisneros 4). The royal house described by Ezparanza left her with an enormous sense of disappointment. He was hoping for a home that was a traditional single-family home. Even though her parents told her it was a temporary situation, Ezparanza believed she wasn't proud of the place she calls home. She felt like she didn't belong here due to the physical condition of the home, but the other homes on Mango Street are similar to the one where Ezparanza and her family lived. When it comes to belonging in society, there are standards we are exposed to, no matter whether we like them or not. An example is when Ezparanza wants a best friend she can call her own. Ezparanza wants a best friend who “can tell my secrets to. Someone who will understand my jokes without having to explain them” (Cisneros 9). In the larger context, we can see that Ezparanza doesn't have a best friend yet, mainly due to her sister's young age at this time. We can also see the fact that his two brothers are best friends with each other, but not with his sisters. In this time period, there was no such thing as boys mixing with girls with high intimacy. That's why the brothers avoid their two sisters outside the house. It was a kind of membership in society, but not to the extent that every person, regardless of gender, interacted with each other on that level. A person's name can play such a role in a person's psychology that it influences their thinking. membership of the company. In "My Name", Ezparanza reflected on her name because she wasn't as sure of her name as people with much simpler and better names than hers. Ezparanza underlines the fact that "at school they say my name in a strange way, as if the syllables were made of tin and hurt your palate... But I'm always Esperanza. I would like to be baptized with a new name, a name more similar to the real one, the one that no one sees" (Cisneros 11). We can see the fact that Ezparanza doesn't feel like he belongs because of the way other people pronounce his name. The mispronunciation of Ezparanza's name poses many insecurities as many native English speakers have difficulty pronouncing his name. The constant problems of people trying to pronounce his name makes Ezparanza feel like he doesn't belong in society. Having a job is one of the milestones in life in which we discover our belonging to society even more. This is what Ezparanza got when his aunt Lala “mihad gotten a job at Peter Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where he worked, and how old I was, and to show up tomorrow saying I was a year older, and that was it” (Cisneros 53-54). Getting a job is part of belonging to a society, and this is what Ezparanza achieved for the first time. What Ezparanza did in his job was very rudimentary. Not much was paid, especially for people of color and women. Males predominantly occupied higher positions than females. Back then, women and people of color also didn't get paid, and that still holds true today. While Ezparanza found work through his aunt Lala and did not receive much pay, having a job meant having a sense of belonging in society. Writing was something Ezparanza discovered she belonged in when she read her work to her aunt. Although her aunt really likes Ezparanza's writing, her aunt tells Ezparanza that she “has to keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at the time I didn't know what he meant” (Cisneros 61). Writing, according to the aunt, is something for which a person is free from restrictions. Although there are many of these so-called rules that we must follow to stay in order, writing can make a person feel like they belong in society. No two people write the same way and that's true because each person has their own voice. What Ezparanza's aunt told her caused Ezparanza to later realize that she has a voice of her own, and this shows during the later stages of growing up. This is the time when she begins to understand the meaning of her voice and it is especially important for her to belong to society. Back when gender roles were predominantly part of the culture, we see this character that Ezparanza looks up to. In “Sally,” Ezparanza describes a character who stands out from social norms and that person is Sally. Ezparanza talks about Sally as a girl who looks feminine based on her makeup, clothes, and especially her shoes. What is more important, however, is when Ezparanza talks about Sally when he brings up the fact that “all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and love and love and love, and no one could call that crazy” (Cisneros 83). All this proves that no matter what life throws at Sally, she remains true to herself. People might disown her for not being a part of this society due to her personality portraying her true colors. Even though people might say things that make a person feel bad, Sally doesn't care because she doesn't want to fit into what society wants her to be. Instead, she wants to change all that by showing herself and above all love towards each other. The feeling of love and being loved makes us feel like we belong to society. In “A Smart Cookie,” we hear Ezparanza's mother talk about herself from her youth. We see the fact that he had the potential to become whatever he wanted to be in life, but instead chose to drop out of school due to poor quality clothes. Ezparanza's mother tells Ezparanza that “shame is a bad thing, you know. It keeps you down. Do you know why I dropped out of school? Because I didn't have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains” (Cisneros 91). Ezparanza's mother felt like she regretted dropping out of school because of her clothes. This already made her mother feel insecure and her mother felt that she did not belong to society. Although Ezparanza's mother was already an intelligent person, she could not go far in life due to these insecurities which led her to where she is today. This life lesson that her mother teaches Ezparanza that being herself is the most important concept she must learn to belong to thesociety. The last time we looked at Sally, we heard about Sally through Ezparanza. Ezparanza described Sally as the image of what a girl should be in society. Sally is the same girl, but she is portrayed in a scenario that places her in the reality of belonging to the society of her current time. Ezparanza describes Sally now as her father's stand-in wife when her father “just went crazy, just forgot that he was her father between the belt buckle and the belt buckle. You are not my daughter, you are not my daughter. Then it broke in his hands” (Cisneros 93). Sally's removal gives the impression that Sally had to play the role of wife because her father prevented her from returning to school. The social norms of gender roles in Ezparanza's time actually play a big role in the fact that Sally has to stay at home, take care of the children and do the things a housewife normally does, which says a lot about the duality of belonging to the society. In “The Monkey Garden” we see Ezparanza, Sally and a group of other characters in an unusual place. The setting we see is a place where these people can roam freely. We see this especially when Ezparanza brings up the fact "that when others ran, I wanted to run too, up and down and through the monkey garden, fast like the boys, not like Sally who would scream if she got her socks muddy." (Cisneros 96). The concept of her really wanting to do things without ever having anyone criticize her for not being a normal girl was something we see in this stage of her childhood. Start discovering more about what it means to belong to a place where you feel free in society. Not caring about the people who despised her in this cartoon, she seemed to push her discovery of belonging in society no matter where in the world she was. Facing a traumatic event can alter our psychology and our view of belonging to society. We see this in “Red Clowns” when Sally and Ezparanza were at the amusement park. This is where Ezparanza faces a truly terrifying moment that hurts her emotionally and psychologically when she “couldn't make them go away. I couldn't help but cry. I don't remember. It was dark. I don't remember. I don't remember. Please don't make me tell it at all” (Cisneros 100). When a person is raped, they don't tell anyone because they might think that they will be hurt again by the same person who raped them. Just when Ezparanza was hoping to lose her virginity to her potential husband, a boy she doesn't love or know at all arrives to ruin everything. We can see the fact that Ezparanza was damaged psychologically by such a traumatic event on this day. As a result, this makes Ezparanza feel as if he does not belong in society due to his powerlessness. Home ownership is something that everyone must have in society. We finally see Ezparanza happy and there's a reason he feels that way. Ezparanza has finally gotten to the point where she has “a house of my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes are waiting by the bed. No one to shake a stick at. No one has trash to pick up” (Cisneros 108). This house that Ezparanza describes is a house he can call his own. Ezparanza's house doesn't live up to all the stereotypes of homeownership. Typically, a man owns a house because this has been normalized for a long time. This house is actually owned by Ezparanza herself and this shows that home ownership is for everyone and not a certain group of people. Ezparanza owning his own house breaks the stereotypes that a man is the main owner of the.