The ritual for both the man and the woman is to go home every night alone and lie in their beds and stare at the same moon, while feeling depressed for the same reason. .
The last example of irony that Cisneros uses is when she wrote "Every other Friday the man drank his beer and laughed loudly. Every other Friday the woman drank her beer and laughed loudly" (Cisneros 237). It is really quite ironic how both of the main characters are so similar in their feelings, empty rituals, and loneliness yet so distant from contact due to a different payday.
Perhaps one of the reasons for Cisneros use of irony in her stories is the irony of her life. "I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, whereas it had everything to do with it! My race, my gender, my class!" (247). It is really ironic that she thought being Mexican wouldn't have a positive influence on her writing career, however it is what distinguished her as the writer she is. Cisneros integrates her bilingual knowledge into her stories, using names like Esperanza, which means hope in English. Ironically Esperanza lives in the ghetto and her name means hope. .
Cisneros uses symbolism in many different instances in the story; in one instance Friday nights appear to symbolize an empty ritual night, the night the characters will go .
out on their inadequate search for a companion. Another example of symbolism would be how the bar symbolizes their superficial relationships and empty routines, their empty .
routine of spending money and laughing with friends. The moon being alone and surrounded by an infinite blackness, symbolizes the loneliness the two feel at the end of the story. The man and the woman find themselves out of the light of the bar and friends, and into the dark of their lonely homes. There they are isolated and alone like the lonely blue illumination of the moon on a dark night.
