Why is Esperanza set free as she writes the stories in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street? Please provide three theme statements.

Because the act of writing aboout and recollecting her
experiences on Mango Street makes her realize that she is strong enough to leave the
area. Esperanza's narrative ends in a circular fashion; however, Esperanza's progress
from the first vignette, whose first paragraph begins with the same words of the third
paragraph of the last vignette. Compared with the first, the last sketch presents a much
stronger "I" who clearly distinguishes herself from the communal "we" that characterizes
the first story. In addition, in the final skecth, the narrator says that what she
remembers most is not moving houses as she says at the beginning of her narrative, but
Mango Street, implying that it is now only a recollection and that she has moved
elsewhere in a house which is her own ("Not a man's house. Not a daddy's" as she puts in
"A House of My Own"). Yet, to move away from Mango Street, she has  had to accept it as
part of her own life. This contrasting feeling is conveyed by the sentence "the house I
belong to but do not belong to" on the last page of the
collection.

Thus, in your theme statements, you could
analyze the ways in which Esperanza belongs to Mango Street and the ways in which she
doesn't belong to it. The narrator celebrates her links to the folk elements of the
Mexican American tradition and challenges white Americans' stereotypes about Mexican
Americans. Yet, her gender and her education make her critical of the role women are
confined to in that society ("My Name" is an interesting vignette for this theme as are
"Boys and Girls" and "There was a Woman She Had so Many Children She Didn't Know What to
Do"). You could also analyze how the collection contrasts Esperanza's own development
with the immobility and stagnation of her community. The genre of the "coming-of-age"
narrative thus supports the main thematic concern of the collection. Finally, you could
also focus on how Esperanza distances herself not only from Mexican American males, but
also from those females who cannot rebel against the impositions of a male-dominated
society.