Short Story Eleven By Sandra Cisneros

My fifth birthday was not a happy occasion. Instead of feeling thrilled that I was going to be a whole year older, I cried. Why would I want to be older? Eventually I’d grow up! Growing up was (and still is) scary to me. Because I was older, I wouldn’t be able to be sad and cry anymore. I felt like I was in a dark box and the walls were closing in on me. Like the main character of this short story, I was upset and afraid. The theme of “Eleven,” a short story by Sandra Cisneros about a girl’s eleventh birthday, is that age doesn’t determine feelings or actions. It’s a number with very little true meaning; people are complicated and have many layers, so they shouldn’t be simplified to just eleven, or thirteen, or thirty-five. Regardless of their …show more content…
She tells about how her interpretation of birthdays and age are different from other people’s. Instead of seeing a birthday as a new page, she sees them as a continuation of before. She compares aging to “an onion or the rings inside a tree trunk...each year inside the next one” (1). People aren’t just their number. Because their past shapes who they are, people are every number they ever have been. This gives them many layers and the ability to access many of those layers. Regardless of their age, at some point people have probably sat “on [their] mama’s lap because [they’re] scared, and that’s the part of [them] that’s five” (1). Whether the person was fifteen or forty-five at the time, they still had a tiny portion of their being who is five years old. This isn’t the only way in which theme is expressed in this short …show more content…
She may be eleven, but that isn’t how she feels; the reason for this is her teacher’s attitude toward the red sweater. Instead of asking her kindly, Mrs. Price is angry about the sweater. As soon as she sees an opportunity to get rid of it, she hands it over to Rachel without giving her any chance to respond. When Rachel attempts to protest this, her voice comes out in a way “that was maybe [her] when [she] was four” (2). She’s intimidated and anxious, so her four-year-old layer comes out; instead of being unembarrassed of herself, she feels incredibly sick, and it only gets worse. When she tries to ignore the sweater sitting on her desk, Mrs. Price becomes even angrier at her, and “all the years inside [Rachel] -- ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one -- are pushing at the back of [her] eyes” as she obeys her teacher. She starts sobbing as if she’s three, and she is. Underneath her eleven-year-old self, she’s

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Sandra Cisneros 'Short Story Eleven'

Rachel In The Short Story Eleven By Sandra Cisneros