What Does Billy Collins Symbolize In On Turning Ten

How do you normally feel on your birthday? What is your favorite part of your birthday? What things do you think about on your birthday? On birthdays people usually think about the fun they have had in the last digit and think about the fun-filled one they will have next. In the story called “Eleven” written by Sandra Cisneros and the poem called “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins shares what the main characters from the story and the poem think about growing older into a new stage of life. In both authors’ writings to convey the feeling they have about growing up they use key literary elements. In Billy Collins’ poem, the speaker is melancholy about turning ten, while Sandra Cisneros has a more upbeat outlook on growing up. Even though they

Collins proposes this theme via his main character. The speaker of the poem is doleful thinking that he will have to leave his childhood imagination and his childish innocence behind because he is growing up. In the text it states, “But now if I fall upon the sidewalks of life,/ I skin my knees. I bleed.” These two lines from the poem symbolize that the speaker is struggling to accept and face reality. The sidewalk symbolizes the reality that he must face and skinning his knees means

She shows this through her writing by way of the speaker. When the speaker, Rachel thinks about the macabre occurrences that take place on her eleventh birthday. In the story it says, “Like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.” This demonstrates that she feels growing up is just a bunch of years stacked on each other, like the layers of a cake. For her, growing up is not really a grandiose thing. Also, in the text it says, “I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon,” This shows that she wishes she can run away from the realities of life that she is afraid to face. She knows one day she will have to face them, but she is not ready yet. All in all, Cisneros