Life as a child is supposed to be effortless, where the only motive is to have fun. In "The House on Mango Street," by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza tries her best to tether the thin line between responsibility and childhood. To escape the reality of accountability and adulthood, Esperanza enters the Monkey Garden to embrace her carefree side. However, she quickly encounters a problem. Esperanza finds that she even in the Monkey Garden she cannot escape the old social, gender, and cultural norms. These norms create unique emotions for Esperanza and these emotions cause her to exclude the literal truth in her narratives. Esperanza's experiences prove that although she would like to, she cannot avoid her progression into an adult. The social norm here is that children are supposed to age, become mature, and take responsibility, making mistakes along the way. Esperanza consistently resists this change. This is evident in the fact that Sally, who has accepted the reality of adolescence, acts very differently than Esperanza. While Esperanza runs through the Monkey Garden with abandon, Sally skirts the edges. Esperanza notes that, "Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself aste them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them" (Cisneros 95). Esperanza was hoping that the garden would make her progress into an adult and the accompanying social norms disappear. However, Esperanza finds that society's norms are far more intrinsic that she had anticipated. When Sally is "tricked" into the boys' game, Esperanza feels a surge of responsibility for her friend, the sort she was running away from by coming to the Garden in the first place. This is when she realizes that fate is chasing her, and she cannot run away forever. Furthermore, Esperanza cannot admit that she does not want to grow older because that revelation in and of itself violates society's norms. For Esperanza and other young pe