33 Stylistic Analysis of an Excerpt from “The Family of Little Feet” – Phillip Brown

Stylistic Analysis of an Excerpt from “The Family of Little Feet” 

in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (39-41)

Selection of Text from “The Family of Little Feet”

There was a family. All were little. Their arms were little, and their hands were little, and their height was not tall, and their feet very small.                                 

The grandpa slept on the living room couch and snored through his teeth. His feet were fat and doughy like thick tamales, and these he powdered and stuffed into white socks and brown leather shoes.                                                                                                          

The grandma’s feet were lovely as pink pearls and dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a wobble, but she wore them anyway because they were pretty.                                 

The baby’s feet had ten tiny toes, pale and see-through like a salamander’s, and these he popped into his mouth whenever he was hungry.                                                                                             

The mother’s feet, plump and polite, descended like white pigeons from the sea of pillow, across the linoleum roses, down down the wooden stairs, over the chalk hopscotch squares, 5, 6, 7, blue sky.        

Do you want this? And gave us a paper bag with one pair of lemon shoes and one red and one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue. Here, and we said thank you and waited until she went upstairs.                                                                                   

Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit exactly, and we laugh at Rachel’s one foot with a girl’s grey sock and a lady’s high heel. Do you like these shoes? But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg.        

Everybody wants to trade. The lemon shoes for the red shoes, the red for the pair that were once white but are now pale blue, the pale blue for the lemon, and take them off and put them back on and keep on like this a long time until we are tired.                                                                    

Then Lucy screams to take our socks off and yes, it’s true. We have legs. Skinny and spotted with satin scars where scabs were picked, but legs, all our own, good to look at, and long.        

It’s Rachel who learns to walk the best all strutted in those magic high heels. She teaches us to cross and uncross our legs, and to run like a double-dutch rope, and how to walk down a corner so that the shoes talk back to you with every step. Lucy, Rachel, me tee-tottering like so. Down to the corner where the men can’t take their eyes off us. We must be Christmas.                       

Mr. Benny at the corner grocery puts down his important cigar: Your mother know you got shoes like that? Who give you those?                                                                                            

Nobody.                                                                                                                                     

Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops, but we just run.                                                                                      

On the avenue a boy on a homemade bicycle calls out: Ladies, lead me to heaven.   But there is nobody around us.                                                                                   

Do you like these shoes? Rachel says yes, and Lucy says yes, and yes I say, there are the best shoes. We will never go back to wearing the other kind again. Do you like these shoes?                  

Analysis

The House on Mango Street is a book by Sandra Cisneros that I purchased several years ago at a local bookstore. It is a book that I found appealing, because it is a selection of short pieces. I read a few stories in the store before purchasing the book and found that I enjoyed the vignettes and the writing, so I bought the book. Maybe I liked the author’s style?

Typically, as a reader, I prefer reading nonfiction over literature. For some reason, I have always gravitated toward nonfiction. When I do read literature, I usually enjoy reading short stories, so Cisneros’s vignettes were perfect for me to explore, because they were brief and fun. Many of her vignettes are less than 500 words.

In writing The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros was experimenting with “creating a text that is as succinct and flexible, as poetry” (Cisneros xvii). The goal of creating prose that is flexible is an important goal. I think many of us who write prose exclusively in our personal and professional lives use many of the same basic moves. Prose can feel very confining and inflexible, but we can sometimes be afraid to experiment. However, Cisneros, a creative writer with training in poetry, does special things with prose that I have never tried doing.  She plays with language in her writing. I really like some of the special moves that Cisneros makes when using language. Charles Bressler explains: “Literary language is different from everyday language. Unlike everyday conversation, literary language shouts, ‘Look at me, I am special’” (310). Some of Cisneros’s language is definitely special.

The selection that I have chosen is an excerpt from “The Family of Little Feet.” It use the first 525 words of the vignette. The vignette is fun to read, because it is not just everyday language. This short prose passage has several examples of what can be termed alliteration or consonance, which is “a pattern based on consonant sounds” (Jeffries and McIntryre). Three splendid examples of alliteration occur in this sentence: “The grandma’s feet were lovely as pink pearls and dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a wobble, but she wore them anyway because they were pretty.” The three examples of alliteration (consonance) are: “pink pearls,” “high heels,” and “walk with a wobble.” Other examples containing alliteration in the excerpt are “ten tiny toes,” “plump and polite,” ”feet fit,” “girl’s grey sock,” “long long leg” “double-dutch,” “tee-tottering, and “Skinny and spotted with satin scars where scabs were picked, but legs.” T.R. Johnson reminds us how language can have musical, sound, and maybe even magical properties. Johnson notes that: “Sounds capture our attention” (350). Cisneros definitely seems to be intentionally using the repetition of consonant sounds (alliteration/consonance) to capture the attention of the reader.

Edward P. J. Corbett reminds us that prose can have rhythm as poetry does. Corbett notes: “English-speaking people probably lost their ear for verbal rhythms when written or printed documents superseded oral discourse as the primary mode of communication” (215). Contributing to this loss is the practice of reading prose silently (Corbett). Cisneros seems to pay attention to rhythm as well as rhyme in her prose, which is likely related to her training as a poet.  In the first paragraph, Cisneros writes: “There was a family. All were little. Their arms were little, and their hands were little, and their height was not tall, and their feet very small” (Cisneros 39). The word “little” is repeated three times referring to the members of the family with their little arms, and their little hands. This repetition emphasizes that the family is little. However, the author shifts from “little” to the synonym “small” to describe the family’s feet, because it follows “their height was not tall” which creates a rhyme. This also explains why she used “not tall” instead of “short,” or why she did not just say “they were short.”  It took some analysis to realize that her concern was for “tall” and “small” to rhyme. I feel confident that she was purposefully rhyming now that I am aware of her training in poetry. The rhyme seems to give the writing rhythm. Another move that I think she does is intentionally is leaving the verb “were” out of “their feet very small,” to create a rhythm as well, because the other connected elements have either a “was” or a “were” in them. However, her work is so well crafted that unless you really look, you cannot tell that the last structure lacks parallelism with the earlier three elements, because of the missing “were.” However, the pay-off for sacrificing perfect parallelism is the creation of a rhyme!

Cisneros uses several examples of simile to help describe the feet of the family. For example, the grandpa’s “feet were fat and doughy like thick tamales” (39) contains a simile that is used to link his feet to thick tamales. Another example, “The grandmother’s feet were as lovely as pink pearls” (39) contains a simile that compares or links her feet to pink pearls. Another splendid example, “The mother’s feet, plump and polite, descended like white pigeons from the sea of pillow, across the linoleum roses, down down the wooden stairs, over the chalk hopscotch squares, 5, 6, 7, blue sky” (40) links the mother’s feet with white pigeons. Many people in everyday life probably find feet disgusting, so it is nice to have the image of “lovely” feet that are compared to the beauty of “pink pearls” and “plump and polite” feet compared to “white pigeons.”  Cisneros’s language choices in her similes definitely say, “Look at me, I’m special” as Bressler describes as a characteristic of literary language (Bressler 310).  Even describing feet as “fat and doughy like thick tamales” is special, but not as beautiful to envision.

Cisneros seems to be fond of the additive style. She uses “and” as a connector a lot. Fish states that the additive style can create the effects “of spontaneity, haphazardness, and chance” (61). Her narrator, Esperanza Cordero, is still very young (about age 12), so I think the additive style makes sense, because some of the effects are probably meant to be as Fish described. The author is using an additive style in this sentence, “Their arms were little, and their hands were little, and their height was not tall, and their feet very small.” The conjunction “and” is used three times to connect the three independent clauses and the final phrase. This is an example of polysyndeton, because a conjunction is used in between each clause to make the additive connections (Harris). The connected structures appear parallel in structure, so I did not notice that a verb like “were” was omitted from the final connected element (i.e., “their feet very small”) in my first reading.

Other examples of the additive style are seen in the connecting of adjectives, such as “fat and doughy” feet, “plump and polite” feet, and “Skinny and spotted” legs. In addition, verbs are connected as well, such as “powdered and stuffed.” I think that connecting or yoking two adjectives and two verbs with an “and” can be powerful, when in the right location in the sentence. In addition, I notice how Cisneros uses the “and” to create a prepositional phrase, such as “into white socks and brown leather shoes,” which has two objects “socks” and “shoes.”

The way she lists the shoes is using the additive style: “one pair of lemon shoes and one red and one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue” (Cisneros 40). This uses two “ands” and a “but” as a connector. It is really funny to read the “one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue,” because it is long and seems a bit ridiculous. It sort of makes me chuckle to read about those shoes that “used to be white, but were now pale blue.” In addition, the description or the list of shoes is repeated throughout the excerpt in various ways.

One of my favorite examples of diction or word choice is when Cisneros uses the phrase “a pair of lemon shoes.” In the phrase, the word “lemon,” which is typically a noun is used as an adjective. We could say that “lemon” is used as an adjectival to describe or modify the noun “shoes” (Kolln and Gray). When “lemon” is used here, it is referring to a specific shade of the color yellow. Using the phrase “lemon shoes” seems more special, than calling them yellow shoes. It also demonstrates a flexibility with language. The use of “lemon shoes” shows an example of how we can “experiment with language and then reflect on the interaction between content and the grammatical form” (Micciche 255). For example, I can see that “lemon shoes” works here, but would it work to write about ordering “lemon roses” from the florist?

One of the things that I noticed was Cisneros makes an allusion or reference to the story of Cinderella, when she writes: “Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit exactly” (Cisneros  40). This is evidence of intertextuality, which can be defined as “an echo of, or an allusion to, another text” (Verdonk 112). Echoes of the Cinderella story do appear to exist in this story. The used shoes that were gifted to Lucy, Rachel, and Esperanza “fit exactly” and are described as “magic high heels” (Cisneros 40). The shoes seem to make the three girls feel and think differently about themselves, such as “We are Cinderella.” In addition, it seems that others are perceiving the girls differently. For example: “Lucy, Rachel, me tee-tottering like so. Down to the corner where the men can’t take their eyes off us. We must be Christmas” (Cisneros 40), so the girls realize that they are being noticed by men, because these shoes seem to have transformed their appearance much like Cinderella’s appearance was transformed in the fairy tale.

Interestingly the girls get this reaction as well, “Mr. Benny at the corner grocery puts down his important cigar: Your mother know you got shoes like that? Who give you those?” (Cisneros 40-41). At first, I thought that Mr. Benny was concerned about the girls falling and hurting themselves. However, thinking about him asking, “Your mother know you got shoes like that?” made me think that he thinks the high heel shoes are inappropriate for young girls and may attract the wrong element (grown men). He also says: “Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that. Take them shoes off before I call the cops, but we just run” (Cisneros 41), which seems silly or extreme, but may be out of a real concern of the inappropriateness of these shoes. There is another incident that actually happens in part of the vignette that I did not share that helps the girls decide that the shoes are not for them at this time in their lives, so they go back to their pre-Cinderella times.

One of the things that strikes me is the way Cisneros uses adjectives. When I write, I often place adjectives before the nouns. According to Kolln and Gray, “the usual position for an adjective is between the determiner and the noun headword” (96). However, the adjective can be placed after the headword and “set-off by commas” (96). Cisneros varies her uses of adjectives. In this example, she uses and adjective after the headword: “The mother’s feet, plump and polite, descended …” (Cisneros 40). Rather, than writing the usual “the mother’s plump and polite feet descended…,” Ciseneros places the adjectives “plump” and “polite” after the headword, which splits the subject and verb. Killgallon and Killgallon suggest that using the subject-verb split places the adjective in a position that “adds emphasis to the description” (93). Micciche mentions the “study of sentence slots” and “sentence level choices” as important topics in the study of rhetorical grammar (255). Cisneros’s writing makes me think about how we can make many choices related to the moves and arrangements that we make when writing a sentence to improve sentence variety. I am fascinated by some of the moves that she makes with adjectives and other words, because I typically do not do make some of these moves. Some of them never occurred to me until, I started this class!

Cisneros uses synecdoche in her writing. Synecdoche is a technique that is defined as “substituting a part for a whole” (Holcomb and Killingsworth 103). In the title “The Family of Little Feet,” the family is defined and reduced to their “feet” or “little feet,” rather than being viewed as whole persons. The family is made up of persons, not feet. However, for this vignette, it is important to emphasize that the people in the family have small feet, especially the women. It is her way of setting up how the feet of young girls could fit into an adult woman’s shoe. The family with the little feet and the emphasis on the feet are important in the beginning of the vignette, because they are a vehicle for preparing the way for the high heeled shoes and the girls to take center stage.

Another example of synecdoche that occurs is referring to high heeled shoes as “high heels” or heels rather than shoes, which might also be related to a tendency to shorten or clip language. The high heel or the heel is the defining feature that makes the high heeled shoes special and distinctive. The use of synecdoche allows us to emphasize that the shoes are high heeled shoes and not flat shoes. Referring to high heeled shoes as high heels or heels is a common everyday occurrence in our language. However, the word synecdoche provides us with a term to describe the phenomena, where we equate the part with the whole. Sometimes we need to use synecdoche for emphasis. In this case, the story would be less interesting, if it was not obvious that the shoes were “high heels.”

One of the conventions that Cisneros deviates from is that she does not use quotation marks to capture what the characters are saying. She seems to be using a colon instead as a signal. For example, “On the avenue a boy on a homemade bicycle calls out: Ladies, lead me to heaven” (41). Because the boy is talking, it would be convention to place what he is calling out in quotation marks. However, Cisneros abandons “quotation marks to streamline the typography and make the page as simple and readable as possible” (xvii). Holcomb and Killingworth describe “style as an interplay of convention and deviation” (39), and the choices that we make related to conventions and deviation help define our own personal style and performances. Cisneros’s abandonment of quotation marks works in many cases, but there are a few times where a reader might find it ambiguous, if the reader is uncertain of her scheme (i.e., omission of quotation marks).

In conclusion, I have shared my stylistic analysis of an excerpt of “The Family of Little Feet” from The House on Mango Street! Some of the key elements of Cisneros’s style is that she writes succinct vignettes. She uses techniques, such as alliteration/consonance, rhyme, parallelism, polysyndeton, additive style, simile, allusion, and synecdoche. She writes a variety of interesting sentences. Her use of adjectives is interesting, because she has a variety of moves when using them. Her writing is very descriptive. She uses a variety of moves to link and connect content and words.

Works Cited 

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 5th ed.  Longman/Pearson, 2011. 

Butler, Paul, editor. Style in Rhetoric and Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St.  Martin’s, 2010. 

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. 25th Anniversary Ed. Vintage, 1984, 2009.

Corbett, Edward P. J. “Teaching Style.” Paul Butler, 209-218.

Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Harper Collins, 2011.

Harris, Robert. Writing with Clarity and Style: A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers. (2d ed.), Routledge, 2018.    

Holcomb, Chris and M. Jimmie Killingsworth. Performing Prose: The Study and Practice of  Style in Composition. Southern Illinois University, 2010.    

Jeffries, Lesley and Dan McIntyre. Stylistics. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Johnson, T. R. “Ancient and Contemporary Composition That “Come Alive”: Clarity as Pleasure, Sound as Magic.” Paul Butler, 343-368.  

Killgallon, Don and Jenny Killgallon. Grammar for College Writing: A Sentence-Composing  Approach. Boynton/Cook/Heinemann, 2010. 

Kolln, Martha and Loretta Gray. Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects.  8th ed. Pearson, 2017.  

Micciche, Laura R. “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar.” Paul Butler, 250-266,

Verdonk, Peter. Stylistics. Oxford University Press, 2003.