Eleven By Sandra Cisneros Summary

Age may only be a number, but each year comes with experience: experience in the real world, and experience with life. Throughout humanity, children have always wished to be older and to become an adult. Whether the child wants to be older just so they can stay awake later at night, sit in the front seat of the car, or to not go to school, to be a “grown up” is something that every child desires. Oddly enough, the older and wiser adults get, they wish the exact opposite and want to be young and careless again. The character Rachel in Eleven desperately wants to be older and to have “more pennies in a tin Band-Aid box”. Rachel is struggling with accepting her own age and telling her teacher, Mrs. Price, that an ugly old sweater isn’t hers. In the story, Eleven, the author uses the red sweater as a symbol of age by having the main character talk about age and birthdays, showing that students in the room not wanting to claim it, and forcing Rachel to wear the ugly sweater.
In the story, the author uses the red sweater as a representation of age and purposely has Rachel talk about age and how she wants to be older. Rachel is constantly mentioning her birthday and how she is only eleven years old. She believes that she is too young and still acts like a toddler at

times. “What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.” (Cisneros 1) Rachel thinks that you are still the ages that you have already passed and that everyone can have moments when they act like they are a three year old. She desires to be older and wants to have as many “layers” of ages as she can. “I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five. Four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two.” (Cisneros 3) Rachel isn’t living the best of every day she has available to her and instead is resenting being young.
In Rachel’s school, majority of the students in her class wish to be older, while their teacher, Mrs. Price is characterized to desire to be young again. Mrs. Price was going through the lost and found and came across an old, ugly, red sweater. When Mrs. Price presented the ugly red sweater to the classroom, all of the kids deny that it is theirs. The students not wanting the sweater can represent that they don’t want to be a kid anymore and would rather be an adult, which makes Mrs. Price frustrated. “‘It has to belong to somebody,’ Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember” (Cisneros 2) Their teacher kept asking the students if the hideous red sweater belonged to anyone, in hopes that someone would own up to it belonging to them. Taking advantage of the situation and of their teacher, classmate, Sylvia Saldivar, uses the sweater as an opportunity to embarrass Rachel. “Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, ‘I think it belongs to Rachel.’” (Cisneros 2) Rachel tried explaining to her teacher that the sweater isn’t hers, but Mrs. Price was upset that Rachel was denying the sweater, or in Mrs. Price’s twisted mind, her age. Rachel was disappointed that she had to pretend that the sweater is hers and closes her eyes to make it go away. “But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain” (Cisneros 2) This could represent that Rachel is trying to ignore that she is young, which clearly upsets her, but then she realizes that her age isn’t going to change all of a sudden. Being young is like a mountain you have to overcome, one year, or step at a time.
Towards the end of the story, Rachel is forced by Mrs. Price to accept that the sweater is “hers”, which symbolizes her teachers resentfulness that her teacher feels because Rachel doesn’t appreciate being young. “‘Now Rachel, that’s enough,’ because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-top corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.” (Cisneros 2) Mrs. Price believes that Rachel should be appreciative and own up to young age, represented by the sweater, while Rachel tries to ignore it. Her teacher commands Rachel to put on the sweater and wear it for the whole class to see, which makes Rachel very miserable because in her eyes the “sweater” is ugly and something to be ashamed of. “I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms.” (Cisneros 3) Rachel was appalled because she was forced to wear the sweater and then became even more upset when Phyllis Lopez, a girl in her class told her that it actually belonged to her. “That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers!” (Cisneros 3) Sylvia didn’t want the whole class recognizing her for the disgusting sweater, so she let Rachel be embarrassed in front of the whole class.
Throughout the story, Eleven, Sandra Cisneros, the author, uses the red sweater as a symbol of age by having Rachel talk about her age and her birthday, writing about the students in the room not wanting to claim the red sweater, and forcing Rachel to wear it.

In the story Rachel does not want to be young and says that she would much rather be one hundred and two, but on the contrary her teacher wants to be young again. Mrs. Price is jealous that the kids are so carefree and young, but is furious that they aren’t taking advantage of their youth. In general, kids wish to be a grown up, while adults want to be young again. Whether you are merely a child or an adult, everyone wishes for what they can’t

have