Our knowledge of other characters also comes from Esperanza, who understands them on her own level; we can know more about them, in some cases, by combining what she says with our own insights into human nature. An example is one very minor character — Earl, the jukebox repairman who lives in a basement apartment near Esperanza. Esperanza knows some things about him and probably recognizes his loneliness and displacement, but as a child, she is still unable to articulate these things; older readers will see more than Esperanza does. Other minor characters (including some, like Lucy and Rachel, Nenny, even Esperanza's mother, who appear in more than one chapter) can be "analyzed" as well; the trick is to examine the character through Esperanza's eyes and at the same time to recognize — given our knowledge of who Esperanza is — the hints she gives us, almost unconsciously, of the character she does not yet see. (It is a measure of Cisneros' talent that these hints are almost always present, but that they never intrude upon the integrity of Esperanza's character.) Some of these characters, like Earl, are really minor; the others, important as they may be in Esperanza's life, are (typically for a girl her age) both taken for granted and dismissed from the front row of people with whom she is just now most concerned. The really important people to Esperanza are girls and young women whom she sees as possible role models, a little older than she, a little closer to womanhood.
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