Preview

Pilon By Cisneros Analysis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
448 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Pilon By Cisneros Analysis
Pilon by Cisneros was very intriguing to me. The personal narrative seemed to speak to me about how liberating it can be to be carefree like a child. The author describes the state a little girl is in right before she starts to grow into a young woman. At this age the girl is no longer a baby, so her mother is not dressing her everyday. Yet she is not old enough yet to care how she looks to others. Therefore, while she might not look well kept, but she is always happy. Cisneros refers to this state as close to being a spirit, since the girl is not yet aware she has a body. This could account for how children often neglect safety, because they do not think about the physical consequences of participating in a dangerous act.

She starts the story with a description of a man playing the organ on the street. She describes how people would toss him a few coins because he reminds them of something often bittersweet. I think what the music reminds her of is this stage in her life. It was the happiest time of her life, yet it's bitter because she misses it and wishes she could return to this stage. At the end of this short story she describes all of these things as "all bound together in a county I am homesick for, that doesn't exist anymore. A county I invented. Like all emigrants caught between here and there." I think she is referring to her home
…show more content…
The literal interpretation of this poem is a little girl who uses her finger to write her name in thick layers of dust, and her mother comes along and dusted her signature away. However, I think the figurative meaning is as a young woman who wanted to be an author she made a point to get her opinion on paper whenever she could, in attempt to try to make her mark on the world. However, her mother discouraged her dream. Her mother did not strive for individuality as Alvarez did. Instead, she spent her life trying to maintain a clean appearance, wiping away all signs of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    She is drawn to the music of the land and yet she wonders why Indians being Holocausted and Africans “jumping the broom on Sunday”(getting married) to show the female’s willingness to “clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined” (AMR), are not part of country music. Despite the missing links connecting the experiences of people apart from the mainstream, the speaker loves the depth of “the haunted-hunted heart,” experiencing the pain of love in the music. Eventually, though, the speaker realizes she will never be known to sing a good country song—country is color-coded and she is the wrong shade of country,…

    • 1602 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, while living with her parents she understands that here her dream is not going to come true. The author 's present house contrasts with the house of her dream: "It 's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you 'd think they are holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in."(Cisneros 502). And this evokes a feeling of shame for her house, which is familiar to her since the last place they lived at.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In "The Widower in the country", change is conveyed in many ways. The poem shows that change can bring a life of isolation and loneliness. The poem also shows how change is not always embraced and how we should not lead a life with a lack of change.…

    • 776 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This poem is about a woman that went on a journey , and found herself in the process . In the first couple of stanzas is where she starts her journey and gets lost but then she finds herself and that she found out where home is, home is where you make it. In the saying of “She has lost her way in the street”, means that she is lost, then this saying “For the first time, She understands the words means that she found herself and home.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the second half of the poem, a new facet of the speaker's attitude is displayed. In line 17, she wants to improve the ugliness of her "child" by giving him new clothes; however, she is too poor to do so, having "nought save homespun cloth" with which to dress her child. In the final stanza, the speaker reveals poverty as her motive for allowing her book to be sent to a publisher (sending her "child" out into the world) in the first place. This makes her attitude seem to contradict her actions. She is impoverished, yet she has sent her "child" out into the world to earn a living for her.…

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Secretary Chant

    • 335 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the first six lines of the poem , the speaker describes herself in much detail. Each of her body parts are places with an obvious piece of office equipment. This allows the reader to form a picture of a woman sitting at her desk performing the daily work of a secretary. She does not see herself as a real woman whose hair is “rubber bands,” whose “breast are wells of a mimeograph ink,” and whose “feet bear casters.”…

    • 335 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    contests this ideology through two basic positions - its strict principles of rules and regulations…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The story begins with the couple moving into a summer house. From the very beginning the main character was not all that fond of the house, but as will be explained later, her feelings were inconsequential. As the narrator describes the house, in one of her journal entries, this is also where she begins to refer to herself as being "sick".…

    • 1119 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Everyone’s childhood is a crucial time in their lives, in fact in some cases our childhood determines who we are or whom will become in the future. A child’s childhood must be kept innocent and pure for the well being of the child’s future. The loss of innocence is a theme that recurs over and over again in the novel Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neil. The complete loss of Baby’s innocence is built up throughout the whole novel with multiple different experiences over time. Experiences such as, being exposed to drugs, spending time in foster homes and being engaged in prostitution. Baby’s childhood is ruined due to her own actions and with the assistance of others.…

    • 1365 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Signatures and Apples

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Simile is used to represent the development of the child’s identity. As the girl plays in the dust “[p]racticing signatures like scales” (5), she is expressing her growth as an individual. Her signing her name in the dust gives her a separation from what she views her mother to stand for, which is cleaning and no fun. By writing her name in the dust, the girl is…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In this peom the Narrator tells us at many places about the economic status of the little girl in different ways. In the beginning "when i was a little girl in indianapolis", indianapolis is a subarban area, not a good economy there. It has small towns there and so just by this we can figure out that girl is not from a rich family or place. in the next line it says "sitting on the doctors porches with post dawn pre debs".Sitting on the doctors porches refers to someone sitting on the steps and doing nothing. It shows as someone who has no job or has nothing important to do, so they just sit and look around. It describes how the place where girl lives has people, who have not much t do and so they sit on door steps and kill time. when we read the next two lines of the peom, where is says "i wondered if life would give me a chance to mean". it relates with the fact that she is sitting there doing nothing and thinking she is worthless, and hoping life gives her a chance to make herself mean something important rather than sitting here. Narrator also mentions the slang language being used again and again in the poem like "usta" and the informal way she uses like "and other bullshit stuff".This potrays her surronding , how and where she is brought up, as the economic status is not good and we see where she llives is not with many educated people so the slang language is used alot.They talk about stuff which is not important while sitting and conversing,shows kind of place and people there are.…

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    This description of the house reflects the way the narrator feels while she is there. The placement of house far back from the road mirrors the isolation she feels being confined to that house all summer. The house’s separation from the road and the town echoes the narrator’s separation from society as she is kept alone in the house. This imagery and setting also reflects the way women, especially those with mental health issues, were treated at this time; they were kept separate from humanity and were told that their isolation would help them recover, when in actuality, it was the opposite of what they needed to get…

    • 1582 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel begins with a journey, both physical and emotional; the Brennans are physically moving houses and towns, but also moving into new, unfamiliar territory. The leaving of ‘home’ is synonymous with the leaving of what id known, familiar and comfortable, in a literal and metaphorical sense.…

    • 1585 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The passage starts out with a tone of easy humor, which then changes into a heavy sense of obligation and irony. An easy, carefree relationship is quickly established through the mother’s words, which hold such pride and hope for her children, coupled with humorous descriptions such as the “blue wig” on her head, or a coat so large “you’ll only be able to see [her] eyes”. This lift in emotions only serves to accentuate the sudden weight that is attached to Rodriguez’ words in the following paragraphs. Words like “tired”, “uncomfortably warm” and “listless”, which, when coupled with a focus on material value in the second paragraph, evoke a sense of obligation instead of joy. This change in tone also serves to show the irony of the situation, for even though the predictions proudly made by the mother had come true, they now carry none of the initial joy they had in the past. These descriptions, when contrasted with the opening paragraph, work to reveal the lost relationship, a change from the carefree past to the present.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Perfect Dress

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the first stanza she writes about a confession written, in ink, a journal by a student who is constantly hoping to one day just wake up and be beautiful. Things written in ink tend to not be able to be erased. This confession written in ink may be a symbol for the thoughts running through women’s minds. As much as they would like to erase the thoughts of not being content with who they are and how they look, the thoughts seem to always remain permanent in their brains.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics