House on Mango Street

Beautiful & Cruel (p.88-89)

In this vignette Esperanza decides "not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain." I love this metaphor. She sees, at her young age, that women of her community and heritage are prisoners of their men. They are the most oppressed. Esperanza understands this and therefore doesn't want to follow her female neighbors' and relatives' path. She wants to get away from Mango Street, just like everyone else. But she knows not to take the route that most other girls or women would take. She doesn't want to be taken away by a man, like her friend Sally, and then "chained" to a house. Instead she wants to leave and have her own house, like almost any man can. That's why she "leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." This is the way the men in her community do it. They simply leave - not just the table or the plate.


The Monkey Garden (p94-98)

This vignette bothered me a lot! It started out so beautifully - so innocent. But her silly. depressing, and complex friend Sally had to be too mature.
In this scene Esperanza first begins to loose her innocence. In this scene she feels that nauseous feeling. It's a feeling that's easy to relate to, but hard to describe. It feels panicky and hot and uncomfortable. It's like waking up after a nightmare. One feels it when there's something sickly wrong in the world, especially in regards to sexual issues.
This chapter is so frustrating, because she is doing the right thing but no one cares. Not even Sally, who Esperanza is trying to protect, cares.
I think that this is the scene when Esperanza really begins to see things differently. She begins to understand the strangeness of sexuality.
The last paragraph describes the way she feels after she cried. She "looked at [her]feet .... They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be [her] feet anymore. And the garden ... didn't seem [hers anymore] either." She grew out of her shoes, in a sense. Her body and her mind aren't quite on the same page yet. Things have changed all of a sudden. She's been forced to see the world from a different angle.
I remember looking down at my own legs when I was in sixth grade and feeling awkward. They seemed so far away and not even a part of me.
It's a strange feeling and the world's a strange place.

Jeanette, Craig, and Scout are all outcasts of their societies. They all stand out or disappear in the masses in some extra ordinary way. Jeanette is a lesbian, Craig is simply more sensitive thatn others to all of his surroundings, and Scout is not a lady.
In Oranges this situation is made clear through Winterson's Humpty Dumpty analogy.
In Blankets Thompson shows Craig's uniqueness from the rest of the world with the "Allegory of the Cave" parallelism.
To Kill a Mockingbird adds Scout's aunt to the novel to clearly express how Scout is not growing up as she is expected to by the community.
All three of these characters struggle to belong to some larger community, while not giving up their personal values.

On a personal note, I feel that I had a similar struggle when I moved to Manistee. Although I had lived in California the year before I felt that that year was more to experience something different. I didn't quite care to belong to anything in particular. However, when I moved to Michigan things changed a little. Knowing that Michigan was going to be my permanent residence I hoped to find a group that would easily and readily include me. I felt this was going to be easy, but it wasn't as easy as it was in 3rd grade. At times it was a struggle for me to keep my ideals and
transfer them into a new setting in order to get accepted. Some of my ideas about life or how to live life changed due to my change of environment. I guess I've had to adapt a little.

Blankets and Oranges

Craig, loves to draw and when he is a 5th grader his teacher tells him that, "our lives in heaven will be devoted to praising & worshiping God" he feels alone and hopeless (p 137). Although he knows that he can worship god with his drawings he cannot say anything in his defense; his teacher's emotions were uncompromisable, just like those of Jeanette's mother. Just as Craig's love for drawing has been challenged, so has Jeanette's love for Melanie. As soon as her congregation finds out about her lesbianism they accuse her of being possessed by demons, in the middle of the service. They aggressively force her to repent and deny her love for Melanie, only causing her to lie (p105-109). Both of these characters are strongly religious and both of their religious communities are the factor that question and challenge their harmless passions. Both communities tell them to choose - the church. Besides these similarities they both, in the end, choose themselves rather than their congregation.

While Blankets is clearly a Graphic Novel it more easily creates a visual image to the reader. Still, Thompson strengthens his images by their placement and space on the page, as well as the character and object placement within the picture. Jeanette Winterson, in the mean time, has to be descriptive and precise when creating a strong and symbolic visual image for her reader. She does this especially well in the opening scene in which she describes her mother's morning prayer ritual (p 4). She compares her mother to Napoleon Bonaparte. Her explanations clarify that it is not because of her knees that her mother does not kneel to pray, but instead because of the kind of relationship she has to god. This scene gives the reader a strong sense of her mother's influence and character.

Blankets (pgs.135-138)

Craig, as a teenager, is sitting at a table with the intention to draw. He blankly stares at the white paper, stiffly holding his pencil. Then he shifts in his seat and rests his head on his hand. Shifting again, into the new picture, he still does not know what to draw. Suddenly, his Sunday school teacher enters his mind and asks," does anyone have an idea of what we might be doing in Heaven?" As the page is turned, the reader enters into Craig's childhood flashback:
The four young students each give their personal answer to their teacher's question. The only girl in the group says one thing, which divides her from the two boys who simultaneously speak out, with a "gutter." Craig, who is seated on the other side of the two boys, is also divided from them by a gutter. Although the background that is seen behind each student is continued into the next picture, the students are separated by classifications: "the girl," "the cool boys," and "the loner". Their background should unite them into one picture, because they are all together in Sunday school and they are all of the same age group. However, they have divided themselves up to outcast the others. Each of their responses seems to represent what each of them love to do: "relaxing, like on vacation," going "snowmobiling," playing "football," or "drawing."
To a surprise not only the children segregate from each other, but even the teacher singles out Craig. She questions his response, while ignoring any sort of flaw of the other's. She criticizes his remarks and makes him uncomfortable in front of his peers. As the teacher attempts to change the subject, Craig clings on to his belief that he can worship God with this drawings. Even though his teacher has tried to crush this, he reaches out his hand to share his insight, which is again silenced by his teacher's cold remark.
The last picture of this section was the most intense and most dispiriting. Surrounded by his drawing of "trees and stuff" is the classroom. Little Craig, looking sad, is seated far away from his cluster of peers.
In Craig's flashback we can feel how Craig felt, simply by viewing where Craig Thompson placed each character. The teacher, who is expected to be supportive of all her students, especially as a Sunday school teacher, is always closer to the other three students than she is to Craig. If she is not standing by them, or on their side of the table, she is seen alone in the picture. The character-placement in Thompson's drawings has significant meaning. In this case it shows that Craig felt singled out by not only his peers, but also by those he should apparently trust and look up to.

Inter-racial and Same-Sex Marriage

The caricature of President Bush in the Lincoln memorial closely relates to the theme of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In Scout's society the idea of interracial marriage was unthinkable. If whites and blacks chose to marry, like Mr. Raymond, they were outcasts of the community and it would be that way for their children, and their children. Scout's community made it a sin for a white person to marry a black man or woman. And so it is similar for gay couples today. Even in a city like San Fransisco, where there is a large gay community, it is difficult for gays to stand to their feelings, or "come out of the closet." Many people loose their jobs once it is clear that they are gay or have a same-sex partner. Only a few states allow same-sex civil union, and even fewer conduct same-sex marriages. San Fransisco, surprisingly, does neither.