Eleven Sandra Cisneros Analysis

In Eleven Sandra tells us about Rachel‘s eleventh birthday. The day did not go well. She was put in situations that kept causing all of her other ages to return to her. Sandra Cisneros uses repetition, imagery, and Diction to describe who Rachel is. By doing this readers discover a lot about Rachel’s characteristics.
Repetition is used to emphasize the importance of a word or idea in a text. Sandra Cisneros utilizes repitition to show how important “ when you're 11 years old you are also 10 and nine and eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one [is].” Rachel repeats this many times throughout the story. this can tell readers that she is one that likes to hold onto the past. Rachel even tells her mom that “ when she’s sad and need to cry maybe she’s three”. In many of the situations Rachel is put into on her birthday she refers back to the fact that she is “eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one”.

in the short story Rachel describes moments and objects to the point where we can picture them, smell them ,or even have a sense of how they feel. Rachel describes the way you grow as “an onion” or like “the rings inside a tree…” This causes an image to enter our minds. She also uses imagery to describe “the sweater that smells like cottage cheese” that is “all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even [hers]”. Once readers start to imagine the sweater we can tell that rachel is a clean person. She really doesn’t like dirty objects. Another time imagery is used is to tell us how “hot” Rachel’s face was as she was crying “with spit coming out of her mouth.” This adds to the fact that Rachel is a clean person. She got very upset over a dirty sweater. Her descriptions help readers to imagine the situation she was put