Summary Of Eleven By Sandra Cisneros

In Time “Eleven”, a short story penned by Sandra Cisneros, focuses on a young girl and the battle she faces as she grows older with maturation. The protagonist, Rachel, recounts an event from her past using imagery to help illustrate her feelings and how she witnessed it take place. The diction used in this piece is more informal to properly reflect the narrator’s age. In “Eleven”, Sandra Cisneros depicts Rachel and her struggles with the ideas of maturity, and power. Rachel is first seen having difficulty understanding how people mature. Through use of figurative language, Cisneros describes that as one ages, one still has all of their previous years with them, “Because the way you grow old is kind of … 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.” (Cisneros). Cisneros uses similes to exemplify

Cisneros portrays this conflict through the red sweater and Rachel’s feeling of helplessness. Through the use of imagery and dialogue, the author was able to clearly characterize Rachel’s feelings. She remarks that the sleeves on the sweater are “[A]ll stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It's maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn't say so” (Cisneros). The author describes Rachel’s feeling of disgust towards this sweater, but promptly moves onto the conversation had between Rachel and her teacher. The exchange, in which Rachel was unable to speak up for herself and explain that she is not the owner of the sweater, ended with “[A] big red mountain” on Rachel’s desk (Cisneros). This is extremely important because it paints Rachel in this moment of weakness, feeling completely powerless, and left wanting to be one hundred and two years old. Rachel was left with no other options than to feel that way due to her environment and strict