Windows

The story The Store on Mango street is a beautiful book that uses vignettes as symbolism in it. In there the author tries to portray her thoughts in a symbolic way for the readers to try and figure out as they read along the book. There are a number of vignettes in this book, but a good one is windows.

Windows in this book means a very symbolic thing. In my opinion, the windows reflect on who she is and who she becomes as the story progresses. In "My name," she talks about how her grandmother used to look our the window her whole life. I think that this means that she's looking back at her past self and she's sad that she had left it. On page 102, Esperanza narrates her friend Sally who got married before 18 and went off to live with her husband. Sally is described to be happy as a married women even though her husband can be a jerk. It is also mentioned that she was not allowed to look out the windows. I think that this means that she can't look back at her past, because she likes it the way she is now. In page 79, a girl called Rafaela leans out the windows and dreams her hair was like Rapunzel. I think that from this, the windows can also be who she wants to be. Past, Present, and Dreams. It also talks about how she's locked inside her house, so the windows symbolism could also mean that she looking at her past as well. In page 82, the windows symbolism doesn't really match what I had been thinking about. Instead it talks about how Esperanza dreams about how she had a house where there were big windows, and if you open the little window hatch and gave it a shove, all the sky would be visible. In my opinion, this somewhat is also talking about her dream, and I mentioned that the windows also had something to do with dreams so maybe the windows actually do have something to do with dreams.

In the end, after reading the few chapters with the windows symbolism in them, I really do think that the windows mean the past, present, and dreams. I have to say that I'm not sure how i can elaborate on that, and that this window's symbolism is pretty complicated.