Esperanza Rising

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-11

Chapters 12-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The True Meaning of Wealth

As the novel begins, Esperanza leads a charmed life. She is surrounded by wealth and a loving family. She has no reason to assume her fortunes will ever change, but her father’s murder throws her into a world devoid of all the material comforts she has taken for granted. Initially, Esperanza doesn’t react well to the many deprivations that she and her mother suffer. The author uses Esperanza’s distaste for poverty as a starting point for an examination of what it means to be truly wealthy.

When Esperanza and her mother are forced to take a train ride among dirty peasants, Esperanza recoils in horror. She believes she is better than these lowly people and begrudges a peasant girl the chance to look at her new porcelain doll. Ramona rebukes her for her bad manners. “Esperanza suddenly felt ashamed and the color rose in her face, but she still pushed the valise farther under the seat with her feet and turned her body away from Mama” (70). To make up for her daughter’s rudeness, Ramona fashions a yarn doll for the little peasant girl. The child reacts with delight, which surprises Esperanza.

While Ramona has the emotional maturity to recognize that her family’s circumstances have changed, Esperanza stubbornly clings to the belief that wealth is her birthright. Later, on the same train ride, Ramona engages in a conversation with a peasant woman carrying a load of live chickens. Again, Esperanza finds the encounter distasteful. As the peasant exits the train, Miguel offers an observation:

She has eight children and sells eggs to survive. Yet when she can barely afford it she gave your mother two hens and helped the crippled woman […] The rich take care of the rich and the poor take care of those who have less than they have (79).

Miguel is attempting to point out that true wealth lies in generosity of spirit. It will take some time for Esperanza to fully learn this lesson.

Her greatest teacher in this regard is Isabel. Esperanza teaches her how to make yarn dolls, and Isabel creates quite a collection of them in their little cabin. She is blissfully unaware that she is poor.

Esperanza stared into the dark. Isabel had nothing, but she also had everything. Esperanza wanted what she had. She wanted so few worries that something as simple as a yarn doll would make her happy (176).

When Esperanza gives her porcelain doll to Isabel as a consolation prize for losing the May Queen competition, it becomes clear that Esperanza has finally developed generosity of spirit and the true wealth that goes with it.

The Importance of Family

The three females in the Ortega family are characterized by their love for one another. When Ramona is offered a life of ease if she marries Tío Luis, she rejects the proposal because it would mean separation from Esperanza. “What should we do, Esperanza? Do you think Papa would want me to marry Tío Luis and let him send you to a school in another city?” (48).

Later, when Abuelita is forced to stay behind in the convent, she is determined to be reunited with her family as well. “Mi nieta, we won’t be able to communicate. The mail is unpredictable and I’m sure your uncles will be watching my correspondence. But I will come, of that you can be certain” (51). Neither age nor injury will stop Abuelita from being reunited with her daughter and granddaughter.

Esperanza’s loyalty to her own family allows her to feel empathy for other Mexicans separated from theirs. When she and her mother see people being turned back at the border, Ramona explains that entire families would go back rather than be separated from their loved ones. “Esperanza thought about being separated from Mama and gratefully took her hand and squeezed it” (83-84).

She has a similar reaction when immigration officials raid the camp and begin randomly deporting people. Another migrant tells her, “Families don’t want to be separated from their loved ones and usually go with them. That is the idea. They call it a voluntary deportation. But it is not much of a choice” (207). When Esperanza finds Marta hiding in a packing shed, she takes pity on her former enemy and helps her escape. Again, Esperanza feels enough empathy to put herself in another’s shoes. “She couldn’t stop thinking about Marta. It didn’t matter if Esperanza agreed with her cause or not. No one should have to be separated from her family” (211).

To Esperanza, the worst fate imaginable would be separation from her loved ones. After Ramona becomes ill, Esperanza believes that her mother can only recover if she is reunited with Abuelita. “Esperanza looked at Mama, breathing uneasily, her eyes closed. It was clear she needed Abuelita. They both needed her” (159-60). It is Esperanza’s love for her family that motivates her to find a solution to the problem. She takes charge of the situation by earning enough money to pay for her mother’s medicine and to bring Abuelita to America. This effort helps to turn her attention away from the past she lost to a future that she might still possess.

Embracing New Beginnings

Three generations of women find their lives disrupted when the head of the family is killed. All must make a new start, but ironically, it is the youngest member of the family who has the most trouble adapting. Throughout the novel Esperanza’s life lesson is to learn flexibility. She spends many hours brooding over what she has lost and resents the circumstances that stole her life of luxury away from her.

In contrast, Ramona calmly accepts her changed status. She has the emotional maturity to go with the flow. During their train ride, Ramona befriends a peasant woman, and Esperanza is appalled.

Mama had always been so proper and concerned about what was said and not said. In Aguascalientes, she would have thought it was ‘inappropriate’ to tell an egg woman their problems, yet now she didn’t hesitate (77).

Afterward, Ramona informs Esperanza that they are peasants too.

Esperanza isn’t yet willing to move forward into the future because she is too busy lamenting her lost past. When Miguel tells her about America’s opportunities, she bitterly rejects his idealism and tells him, “I have lost everything. Every single thing and all the things that I was meant to be. See these perfect rows, Miguel? They are like what my life would have been. These rows know where they are going. Straight ahead” (224).

Surprisingly, it is the oldest member of the family who shows the greatest resilience in the face of disaster. Abuelita has accumulated enough life experience to know that every ending is also a new beginning. She tries to impart this knowledge to Esperanza by comparing life to a crochet pattern on a blanket:

Look at the zigzag of the blanket. Mountains and valleys. Right now you are in the bottom of the valley and your problems loom big around you. But soon, you will be at the top of a mountain again. After you have lived many mountains and valleys, we will be together (51).

Before they are separated, Abuelita gives Esperanza the task of finishing the blanket. The girl complies because this piece of busywork connects her to her grandmother. Later, she covers Ramona with the blanket, hoping to extend the connection to her own mother. By the time the three are reunited, Esperanza has learned how to navigate the peaks and valleys of life just as she masters the corresponding crochet stitches. She is now ready to impart that same lesson to Isabel when she teaches her little protégé to crochet. “Esperanza smiled and reached over and gently pulled the yarn, unraveling the uneven stitches. Then she looked into Isabel’s trusting eyes and said, ‘Do not ever be afraid to start over’” (254).