Answer to Question #285697 in English for Sabelo Xulu

Question

4. The story portrays the pressure on people to conform to societal expectations.(5)

4.1. How does the behaviour and speech of the narrator’s parents differ from that of Aunt Sal? Quote examples from the text and explain the differences.

4.2. What effect does this have on the way the narrator remembers these three family members? Focus on how the narrator talks about Aunt Sal and about her parents.

5. Consider the following quotation from the story: “I would have loved gold if it wasn’t for Aunt Sal” (Isaacson 2007: 793). Briefly explain the respective literal and figurative meanings of this statement within the context of the story. In this regard, you should contrast how the narrator remembers her parents, on the one hand, and Aunt Sal on the other.(5)

Answer 1

4.1 The narrative voice is an essential element of the telling as it allows the reader to relate to the character telling the story and understand the motivations and desires of other characters, as well. The narrator is eager; the parents are cold and distant. The narrator is anxious; the parents are solemn and concerned. The narrator is excited; the parents are pleasant but uninvolved.

4.2 Esperanza describes how her family came to live at the house on Mango Street. She, her parents, her brothers, Carlos and Kiki, and her sister, Nenny, moved to Mango Street when the pipes broke in their previous apartment and the landlord refused to fix them. Before they moved into the house on Mango Street, the family moved around a lot. The family had dreamed of a white house with lots of space and bathrooms, but the house on Mango Street has only one bedroom and one bathroom.

5 I Could Have Loved Gold’ by Maureen Isaacson as an example of the above and it refer to a message that is being conveyed in a story, we do not mean this in a moral sense. In other words, the message of a story does not have to be some kind of “lesson” that we as readers should “learn” from the story. The message of a story rather refers to the deeper meaning of a story that might make us think differently about something in our world.