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Sandra Cisneros 'Short Story Eleven'

831 Words4 Pages

Jordynn Bowers
Per-1
Armstrong
Eleven

Some people believe that turning a year older is exciting and means that you will be treated more maturely. Well, in Sandra Cisneros's short story, “Eleven” Rachel quickly becomes aware that it is anything but that. By using interior monologue, imagery, figurative language, and repetition Sandra Cisneros evokes how rachel really feels about turning a year older.

Through the use of interior Sandra Cisneros demonstrates how Rachel has grown from what she experienced on her eleventh birthday. By including the thoughts that go on in Rachel’s head we get to learn more about her as a character and what she is feeling. Rachel believes that when you turn a year older you don’t become more mature you’re still “ten, nine, eight … two, and one.” Rachel came to this understanding when her teacher, Mrs. Price, accused her of losing a “ugly sweater” and put it on her desk. At first …show more content…

Sandra ties imagery and simile together a lot in this short story. One example is when Rachel compares her being eleven to “pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.” She is saying this because she is so young and inexperienced. She just wants to be older and wiser so she would know what to do in situations like these, but instead she just shuts down and gets emotional. She also says that the red sweater hurts her and smells like cottage cheese. This illustrates how much that sweater really hurts and disgusts her. This can be relatable to the reader, for everyone has gone through a time in their life when someone has made you do something embarrassing that you had absolutely no control over. This is the reason at the end of the story Rachel says she wishes this day-her Eleventh birthday-to be “far away like a runaway balloon.” She was so traumatized that she doesn’t even want to remember a memorable birthday. One little sweater ruined an entire memory of

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