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Eleven By Sandra Cisneros

603 Words3 Pages

The average kid has someone they look up too. They want to be older so they can do whatever they want. Then when they are all grown up they want to be a kid again. They realise how they have wasted their life focusing on the future. When something bad happens they wish to be the age they are not and when someone is young they wish to be older and/or younger. People are always wishing to be an age they are not. Something really bad happens and embarrassment overcomes the body, the first thing that comes to mind is wishing to be an older and/or younger age. The short story, Eleven by Sandra Cisneros, is about a young girl, named Rachel, who wishes to already be in the future due to being embarrassed. For example, when the teacher calls her out, …show more content…

The poem, “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins, is about the fear of growing up and saying goodbye to your past, but not forgetting it. When growing up people feel as though, “It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends…”(Cisneros). Meaning that when someone reaches a certain age they have to grow up and act a certain way. It is like an invisible code that comes along with growing up. The picture by Hannah Galvin, called “Growing Up”, demonstrates the different stages in life that an average person will go through and shows how kids look up to adults. It starts off with a baby crawling, to a toddler and a child looking up to the young adult. This shows, how starting from a young age kids have a role model that they look up to and admire. They set goals for themselves and base their life on their future. They want to become an NBA player so they train everyday of the week, they want to become a surgeon so they get straight A’s and nothing less. People set high goals and push themselves, but when they get older they don’t think about the future and don’t want to grow up. The adult in the picture looks stiff, mad, sad, and his body language reads as though he does not want to move on. Sometimes people get caught up in their dreams and when it is too late realise how unhappy they are, because they never lived in the present, they never lived

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In the poem “On turning Ten '' by Billy Collins and in the short story “ Marigolds” written by Eugenia W. Collier, both authors talk about how life has changed and the end of their childhood based on situations of their past life. In the poem and the short story, both authors explore the impact of losing innocence by describing their memory and discovering the truth. Both authors show how emotional it was to face the truth and reality based on his and her memories. In “Marigolds”, she starts losing her innocence when she “Never heard a man cry before” (Collier 42) and how she discovered Miss Lottie wasn’t frustrated with the situation at the end but was upset. In “On Turning Ten” he realizes “I skin my knees.

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Sandra Cisneros the author of Eleven she uses a lot of similes, and senses to make the reader feel like they are there in the classroom with Rachel. When Rachel is explaining “when you you are growing old it’s like an onion, or like the rings in a tree, or like the little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, one year after another”. Sandra makes more similes throughout the story but this simile is the best on because, it’s probably the more accurate one as you get older so does your body, you get taller until you stop growing, then when you get about your late 30s early 40s you start to get gray hair plus the wrinkles start to come out. She wasn’t exactly saying that, but what she was trying to say is, even when you are getting older you don’t feel that way, you still have a little five year old who wants to come out and play.

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Every hear we turn an age older but does it feel like it right off the bat? In “ELEVEN” by Sandra Cisneros, Rachel who is now eleven goes through a rough day on her birthday. Cisneros uses literacy techniques to characterize Rachel and her actions throughout the short story. This techniques are similarity, repetition and conflict. Cisneros uses similarity or connection throughout the short story.

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The story, Eleven, by Sandra Cisneros, is about a girl named Rachel and an awful red sweater. Rachel is forced to wear the sweater, although it isn’t hers. We can learn from this book to stand up for ourselves. Rachel didn’t and was forced to wear the sweater even though it wasn’t hers. She also got embarrassed in front of the entire class, and to top things off, her birthday was ruined.

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Being scared to grow up is normal. In the story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, growing up can change the way you think and act. That is something you can think about while reading about a character named Lizabeth, who is now telling the story of how her life was in her little village during the Great Depression. Lizabeth was going through a transition between 14 and 15, so all her mind was tangled up in a knot. The author tells us how this was a significant moment in Lizabeth's life while she was going through a tough time growing up.

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The author, Sandra Cisneros, uses literary techniques in “Eleven” to characterize Rachel by using metaphors, comparisons, and repetition. In the beginning of Sandra Cisneros’s short story, she states that when a person becomes an age older they will not feel a difference. The character Rachel explains that in different situations, for example, “Like some days you might say something stupid, and [you will feel ten]” a person might feel different from their actual age. She then competes growing old to layers of an onion, rings of a tree, wooden dolls that fit inside each other because, according to her, “that’s how being eleven years old is”.

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In the poem, “On Turning Ten”, Billy Collins uses tone to show the complexity of growing older. He views aging through a lens of hopelessness yet also with nostalgia. In the first stanza, Collins portrays his feelings of hopelessness by listing things he imagined himself as such as wizard and a soldier (Collins 13-16). This shows how before he was carefree and imaginative. In the next stanzas he uses words like “solemnly” and “sadness” (Collins 19 and 24).

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Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Eleven”, poem “My Wicked Wicked Ways”, and book The House on Mango Street have many similarities and differences in terms of style, tone, theme, character and setting. In the short story “Eleven”, Sandra Cisneros manages to convey a powerful message about growing up from the perspective of an eleven year old. The story starts out with Rachel, the protagonist, who is turning eleven today. It starts out with her at school while she's in math class.

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In the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, Rachel’s attitude is anxious and pessimistic using selective details and imagery. Throughout the short story, there is a continuous theme, birthdays. While most people cannot wait for their birthdays, Rachel feels quite differently. Rachel not only thinks she's eleven, but also ten, 9 , 8 , 7 , and so on. She thinks that when you “sit on your mama’s lap because you're scared,...

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The transition from the fantasy world of children to the adult world is “the beginning of sadness” (24). Although it is quite unusual to think that a ten-year-old would think this way, he recognizes that this transition

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Childhood never lasts forever. No matter who you are, where you come from, and who you think you are, age will catch up to you and tear you down like it has everyone else. Although aging is brutal, there is an incredible range of emotions throughout. A primitive way to differentiate the two is by happy and sad. These are not mutually exclusive and this is unequivocally displayed in the Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

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Griffin Youngs Period 1 English 10 GT In the short story, “Eleven”, Sandra Cisneros depicts Rachel as an empathetic, wise, but socially misunderstood child who feels excluded by both her teachers and her fellow students. Cisneros utilizes various literary techniques throughout “Eleven” to help bring out the characteristics of the young and bashful Rachel, whose shyness keeps her from being able to express her inner brilliance. A prominent literary technique shown by Cisneros throughout the story is imagery.

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They both experience the good and the bad. They are also both intertwined with each other. Even when as a child sometimes take adult decisions. Then there are the times when as an adult you have to let your inner child take the action. Next as an adult they have to make firm decisions.

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