Eleven By Sandra Cisneros Analysis

In the story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, Rachel, the main character, depicts an event on her eleventh birthday that strongly affected her. The story begins by explaining Rachel’s perspective and her feelings on birthdays. It’s her eleventh birthday, but she feels as if she’s still ten years old. She expected to wake up and feel eleven years old, but everything was just like the day before and nothing had really changed. Rachel says that when we all do or say something unintelligent, that’s the part of us that’s still a younger age. And when we have to go to our mom for comfort because we need a shoulder to cry on, then that’s the part of us that’s still a small child. Rachel vividly describes how she feels with multiple similes like, “Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.” Rachel doesn’t feel eleven on her birthday, but feels eleven weeks or months after it. But on her …show more content…
She didn’t feel as if being eleven years old brought her the intelligence to speak up to Mrs. Price and thought that if she was older she would have known what to say. The incident definitely affects her perspective on herself because it forces her to ponder on how her age has prevented her from doing what she really wanted to do. When Rachel releases everything she’s been holding in and bursts out in tears like a volcano erupting after a couple years of being dormant, she feels embarrassed because she’s showing her vulnerable side to everyone in her class. She feels like she’s three years old when she cries and is ashamed because she doesn’t want anyone to think of her as immature or weak. Rachel thinks that the younger you are the less strong and less smart you are which in some cases are true, but in others are very