Jenn Hornor 9/28/14 Pd. 3 Eleven Growing up does not happen in a blink of an eye, it takes weeks or even months before you finally mature. Sandra Cisneros, the author of “Eleven”, shows how Rachel is a young, juvenile and reserved girl during her humiliating eleventh birthday. Through the use of similes, metaphors, repetition, and symbolism, Rachel is characterized as an immature girl who is trying to act mature, but cannot since she has not learned how to act the maturity of an eleven year old. Rachel wakes up on her eleventh birthday, and realizes that while she is actually eleven, she does not feel eleven as, “the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk” When you turn eleven, your still “ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.” Rachel cannot feel eleven because she still has the childish behaviors from when she was younger. Rachel uses many similes, describing crying like uncontrollable hiccups, drinking milk to fast, and little animal noises. Her poise rattles “like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box,” and she is always on the verge of her emotions, slipping into another session of tears. …show more content…
Rachel displays that advanced maturity in her thoughts, but fails to speak them. She repeatedly thinks how, “I wish I was one hundred and two.” Rachel wants to be one hundred and two, because then she would have the courage to say something intelligent like someone who was one hundred and two. Rachel also says that “Today I'm eleven. There's cake Mama's making for tonight, and when Papa comes home from work we'll eat and everybody will sing. When she first says this, she sounds very excited, however when she repeats the statement the final time you can feel how upset she is. Because of her difficult birthday, she doesn’t want to celebrate her day but forget about it as quickly as