In the first paragraph, she speaks about her name with great despair. Her use of metaphors are extremely powerful. “It means sadness, it means waiting”. Possibly waiting for someone to really understand her? “It is like the number nine. A muddy color”. The number nine may be symbolic to Esperanza not feeling whole or good enough; she is not quite a ten. When I think of her describing her name as “muddy”, it makes me think she feels her name is tainted.
In the next paragraph, we find out that she has inherited her name from her grandmother, who she describes as being a “horse woman”. She explains that it is bad luck if you're a female who is born in the year of the horse because “Mexicans don’t like their women strong”. This touches upon gender roles in the Mexican culture. We start to gain an insight on why Esperanza is feeling despair with her name.
She explains that her grandmother never wanted to get married. However, she was carried away by her grandfather “as if she were a fancy chandelier”. The chandelier is symbolic to Esperanza’s feelings; she does not want to be a display piece for others, she wants to be free.
“And the story goes she never forgave him.
She looked out the window her whole life,
the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.
I wonder if she made the best with what she got
or was she sorry because she couldn’t be
all the things she wanted to be.
Esperanza. I have inherited her name,
but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.”
I personally loved this paragraph. I feel it accurately represents her need for individuality. Esperanza feels almost as if she is branded with the name she inherited. Because she inherited her grandmother’s name, she feels she might inherit “the sad fate” that her grandma was dealt. Esperanza desperately wants more for her life. She does not want to feel inferior gender-wise, as her grandmother had felt.
The “place by the window” reference symbolizes her fear that one day she will find herself feeling sorry for not becoming the person she had the potential of being. She wants to break free from the normal Mexican culture.
Esperanza explains that she wants to “baptize” herself under a new name. This is extremely symbolic to Esperanza’s desire for individuality. She wants to be re-birthed under a new name to start a new fate and to become a new person. The only way she feels she can escape her fate is to live her life under a new original name - not one that she has inherited that is tainted with someone else’s story - but one that is perfect for her; Zeze the X.
