House on Mango Street Essay -- essays papers

House on Mango Street I never had a choice. They decided it all for me and the next thing you know, we were moved. One night, I come home and my father gives me a big smile and says, we’re out of here. I give him a puzzled look, but after staring into his grinning face, I realize what he means. After thirty nine hard years, he has finally found the home he has always wanted. Since my father was young, he had always dreamed of the house he would one day reside. He would say to his mother, my grandmother, when I get big, I will live in a house as big as New York. When my father began working, he started to save money in the bank, knowing one day it would be spent for his dream home. He would doodle out sketches of how he thought it would look. As he aged, his goal became more realistic. He had a higher paying job, and was able to move out on his own. Knowing he could not just leap into a palace at the ripe age of 19, my father settled down in a run-down apartment complex. He was placed in an old, one bedroom apartment. He would sleep at night, and listen to the other poor families complain and argue into the wee hours. After two years of this, he married my mother and they moved into their first house. This is where I was born and raised. Everything in my life has come from this place. The house was a part of me, and I assumed it would always be there for me. But three days before my sixteenth birthday, everything changes. They have been searching for a new place for months, and my father’s current job gives them the option to look at pretty nice houses. But they claim to have found the greatest bargain of all time. And without my input, they have picked this â€Å"great† house in the middle of nowhere, Wynantskill. So, my father tells me, get ready to say goodbye to your house, we can move to the new place in two weeks. And despite my wishes otherwise, this new place is going to become my home. And when I first see it, it is just as my father has described his house will one day be. He used to sit me down and tell me of the one day when we would move into this gigantic house. He described it as a combination of the White House, a submarine, and a New York City skyscraper. Never worried about how much it would cost, just knowing that one day he would be able to own this residence was all he needed. It’ll make thi... ...up the phone, it rings again. This time it is my father. Hello, son, how are the kids doing? Fine, fine, they are watching TV or something. They’re doing okay. All right, could you put A.J. on the phone? I’d like to ask him something. So I go to get A.J., and I find him bouncing up and down on the couch. I pull him off, and I thrust the phone in his hand. I go back to my room and try to fall asleep when A.J. comes back in, holding the phone outstretched for me. Yeah dad, anything else, I ask. My father tells me that A.J. told him what he and Nick have been doing for the past few hours. So? I say. Well, actually, yes, I was wondering when you are going to get off your lazy butt and actually do something for your family. You’ve been lounging around all day, and the kids still haven’t even eaten lunch yet. I trusted you to watch your brothers to make sure they are okay. But, you can’t take thirty minutes out of your day to play a nice game with them, or even stay awake to make sure they aren’t trying to drink Pine-Sol again. So, you are grounded until I can think of what to do with you. Anything else? Then I hang up the phone and go back to bed