"The House on Mango Street" by Cisneros and "My First Kill" by Coelho

In the opening lines, Cisneros shows the form of life the family has been leading, moving from redact to value. For the girl, the hope is forever that a move will lead to improvement, to a better place to live and so to a better life: " only if what I remember most is moving a readiness" (Cisneros 223). The family grows as it moves, with new births adding children: "By the time we got to Mango street we were six--Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me" (Cisneros 223).

This, then, is the sort of life the family leads--many children and many moves from one place to another. The moves are probably brought about by different problems, just the last move is brought about because the water pipes broke and the landlord refused to coif them. The family had lived in apartments, and at a time it moved to a household. The girl on the face of it sees this as a good thing and as a step up, into "a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't comport to move individually year" (Cisneros 223). In this line we can see the hope the girl has for a permanent residence and to stop moving from place to place, and this makes it both the more powerful when she discovers that this is not the case and that the family will consider to continue searching for the perfect place to live.

The girl has intimate in her short life that dreams are difficult to win and that reality does not always match the promises we make to each other. The girl has an image of the house the family is to have, a house wit

h running water, with real stairs, and with a basement with three washrooms:

Our house would be white with trees near it, a great big yard and grass emergence without a fence. This was the house pap talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed (Cisneros 223).

For this male child as for the girl above, the lesson learned will last a lifetime and cannot be rubbed out, any more than the reality each now perceives will change.

The house itself becomes a symbol in this story, a symbol of change, of success, of achieving the American dream, as seen on television.

The tone is that of memory, in this case a memory that involves disappointment and a credit about the way the world works. The point of view is that of the green girl, and the setting is urban, as noted.

I knew then I had to have a house. A real house . . . entirely this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go (Cisneros 224).

"Later I'd have to pick up straight into his eyes and measure up to everything that happened during the hunt" (Coelho 230). The boy feels a sense of responsibility and links it to age--he is growing up and is ready to put aside childish things. He has calamus before, but now he is hunt club, which is very different. He is hunting something to eat and intends to shoot at nothing else. He has up to now been told some animals to avoid, such as the owl because it catches field mice and so helps the farm.

The relationship of the boy to his set out is indicated by the fact that when public lecture to someone else, he always refers to his father as "the boss." The father is indeed Dave's boss, but is the boy's father. This story has more of a storey line than the Cisneros story, with a series of events unfolding in a realistic tone as the boy embarks on his hunting trip, encounters Dave, and then experiences differ
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