In the particular vignette entitled “The Family of Little Feet,” Sandra Cisneros uses symbolism to illustrate the more general, overall theme of entrapment in The House on Mango Street. Esperanza continuously has a fascination with feet that goes on throughout the entire novel; feet are the mode that allow us to travel from place to place, wherever we wish to go, and as Esperanza feels trapped, so do her own feet seem futile and defective. This spurs an unmistakable fascination with the feets of others who seem to have seen so much more than her. In “The Family of Little Feet,” a family of people who have- surprise- little feet and gift their shoes to Esperanza and her friends. The amount of detail in which Esperanza describes the feet to the reader is almost shocking at first and provides as an exemplary way of drawing attention to the symbolistic doting. She describes the grandpa of the family’s feet as being “fat and doughy like thick tamales… powdered and stuffed into white socks and brown leather shoes” and the grandma’s as “lovely as pink pearls and dressed in velvety high heels that made her walk with a wobble.” The feet also serve even further as symbols of the characters’ overall personalities- the patriarch being lazy and heavy and the matriarch being proper and lovely. Esperanza feels almost drawn to the feet of people she is fascinated by and sees them as modes of understanding the people as a whole via the tales their feet can tell- where they have been, etc. This device as used by Cisneros communicates the overall theme of entrapment by highlighting Esperanza’s intense dreaming, especially when connected to something so seemingly mundane as feet.