Sandra Cisneros Eleven

"I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes." This quote by Alice Hoffman, an American novelist, captures the theme of the story “Eleven,” by Sandra Cisneros. On her eleventh birthday, Rachel, the narrator, is confused by the multifarious childish, and tween-like emotions that Rachel feels, and as a result, she presents the demeanor of a child more than that of a tween.
Rachel’s day starts to go awry when, Mrs. Price, her teacher, holds up “an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all 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 1). By just looking at the sweater, Rachel already feels a strong sense of bitterness directed to it, which is child-like. Young children often dislike something without even knowing any information about it. Many children often try to

“judge a book by its cover” but then as tweens start to become more inquiring and learn more about the book. Then, Sylvia Saldivar openly states that the sweater might belong to Rachel. Mrs. Price then lays the sweater on her desk, but all Rachel says in response is, “ ‘That’s not, I don’t, you’re not…Not mine.’ I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four” (Cisneros 1). Even Rachel agrees that she speaks in the voice of a 4 year old. This trait of speaking like a child clearly shows that Rachel is unable to say what she wants clearly. While a tween would state simply and smoothly that the sweater doesn’t belong to him or her, many small children stutter and take several seconds to process what they want to say. Rachel shows this trait when she must think about what she says, and stutters in her speech.
Later that day, Mrs.

Price forces Rachel to put the sweater on, and she then bursts into tears. "That's when everything I've been holding in since this morning, since Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I'm crying in front of everybody" (Cisneros 2). She buries her head into her "stupid clown-sweater arms" (Cisneros 2) and sits down on the desk to try and hide her face. Rachel shows a childish demeanor because many young children often cry when they don’t get what they want. In this story, Rachel cries because of her inability to get what she asks for: to not have anything to do with the ugly sweater. Later in the story, Rachel wishes that she weren’t eleven because all the years bottled up inside her, from "ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one--are pushing at the back of my eyes” (Cisneros 2). This quote shows that Rachel has more childish years inside of her, and therefore displays them more often than her tween

years.
Overall, Rachel disseminates the idiosyncrasies of a child. The first example of her childlike actions is when she stuttered, and had felt malice toward the sweater on first sight. A second example of her puerile state of mind is when she cries in front of her entire class because of an ugly sweater. Rachel becomes embarrassed by the sweater’s presence on her desk and cries but fails to realize that she is embarrassing herself even more. The theme of the story is clearly explained in Blanche Lincoln’s quote: “Right and wrong becomes more difficult for each of us as we grow older, because the older we get the more we know personally about our own human frailties.”