In the novel, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros uses the “Monkey Garden” as a symbol to represent Esperanza’s growth into the adolescent stages of her life in the vignette, “The Monkey Garden.”

Using the monkey garden, Cisneros creates an allusion that connects this garden to the Garden of Eden. Esperanza even states that, “Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything” (Cisneros 96). The children used this garden as an oasis away from their parents and their responsibilities; however, eventually things went wrong. Just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the monkey garden is used to symbolized Esperanza’s loss of innocence and introduce her growth into her adolescent years. Suddenly, Esperanza was too old to play and run around with the younger children. Her friends that were her age preferred to hang out by themselves and do more mature things, including her friend, Sally. “I said, Sally, come on, but she wouldn’t. She stayed by the curb talking to Tito and his friends. Play with the kids if you want, she said. I’m staying here” (96). Sally and her other friends were to old to run around and play with the kids, but Esperanza, on the other hand, was too innocent to understand her friends intentions. “I wanted to go back with the other kids who were still jumping on cars, still chasing each other through the garden, but Sally had her own game” (96). This represents how manipulative Sally is, which puts an uneasy image in Esperanza’s mind. When the boys took Sally’s keys away Esperanza couldn’t understand why Sally kept pretending to be mad, and she was disgusted by the boy’s attitude towards the game. “One of the boys invented the rules. One of Tito’s friends said that you can’t get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes” (96). This infuriated Esperanza and she couldn’t understand why Sally wasn’t defending herself against this game where the boys would always win. Esperanza knew that this wasn’t right. It was as if the snake from the Garden of Eden himself had come up and convinced Sally to go into the garden with Tito’s buddies. Here, the monkey garden has been transformed from the Eden-esque oasis to place for experimenting with the opposite sex, serving as a symbol that will change the way Esperanza thinks.

In an effort to save her friend she went back into the monkey garden and took with her, “three big sticks and a brick and figured this was enough” (97). As Esperanza went into the garden equipped with these items Sally told her to just go home and the boys said to leave them alone. They didn’t want Esperanza interrupting their “game.” “They all looked at me as if I was the one who was crazy and made me feel ashamed” (97). Esperanza couldn’t believe what Sally and the boys were doing. She knew that it wasn’t right, but when she tried to interfere and help Sally she was ridiculed and told to leave. They made Esperanza feel as if she was the one who wasn’t doing what she was supposed to. When Sally went behind the old blue pickup with those boys it was as if she took a bite from the forbidden fruit, turning the monkey garden, in Esperanza’s eyes, into a cruel place. Esperanza ran away from Sally and the boys and went to the other end of the garden. Esperanza wanted to, “will [her] blood to stop, [her] heart to quit its pumping. [She] wanted to be dead” (97). All of Esperanza’s innocence had just been stripped, she no longer knew right from wrong, and no longer was the monkey garden an enjoyable place for her. She felt lost within her own world. “I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn’t seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn’t seem like mine either” (98). The way Esperanza thought about herself and the monkey garden had completely changed. With this loss of innocence she doesn’t know what to do with herself or the monkey garden.

Therefore, Cisneros uses the monkey garden as a symbol to symbolize Esperanza’s loss of innocence. Just as Adam and Eve didn’t feel as if they belonged in the Garden of Eden, Esperanza no longer believed that she belonged in the monkey garden. Esperanza’s growth throughout this vignette represents her struggle into her teenage years and the hardships that come with it.