Literary Analysis Of Eleven By Sandra Cisneros

The most important lesson for Rachel that comes out of this situation is that after wearing the disgusted sweater she has become even older, and it was tied to the experience instead of the birthday itself. She understands that it is the challenge she needs to grow up faster as she will receive additional benefits of behaving the way she wants and resisting to the outside irritators. As for the literature techniques, the author applies language, diction and symbolism to reveal the issues of experience, aging, knowledge, power, authority and freedom. The discovering is gaining age are conveyed with the help of the memories of eleven-year-old girl on her birthday. Rachel resists her humiliation from Mrs. Pierce, and that is the exact moment when her “smart eleven” comes as well[2].

Diction is the word choice used by an author. Syntax is the way words are used to create a sentence. Imagery is using descriptive words to create a sensory experience for the reader. In the story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, diction, syntax, and imagery are used to give the speaker a youthful voice.

Often times readers desire for works that they can relate to on a personal level. With that in mind Billy Collins wrote a poem entitled, “On Turning Ten” discusses the hardships experienced from growing up. The poem is written from the perspective of a child who has turned ten years old and is looking back at their great life as a very young kid. The child sees the world in a different way and feels sad that he has grown up. Collins, through his poem, displays the emotional hardship of growing older and causes the reader to relate to the child as they remember their own experiences growing up.

In “Eleven”, written by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros uses literary techniques such as diction and imagery to characterize Rachel’s character during her transition from age ten to age 11. These literary techniques help to describe how Rachel feels in certain situations while also explaining her qualities and traits. Through the use of these literary techniques Cisneros also collaborated on Rachel’s feelings when she was other ages and how she felt at that time during her life.

In “Only Daughter,” published in Glamour magazine in 1990, Sandra Cisneros talks about how it’s like for her to be the only daughter in a Mexican-American family of six sons. She talks about some of the struggles she faces. Sandra is a writer. A writer who wants her dad to be curious about her writing. He never bothers to ask what she’s writing. When they’d ask her father how many children's he has, he’d respond with “I have seven sons.” The mention of only sons, not a daugher. This proved to her he was only proud of his sons but not her. According to him she’d also have to go to college but only to find a husband. A man who will take her out of poorness. Since, according to Sandra that's why her dad thought college was important for her. He didn't care about her major. Sandra Cisneros is a writer who didn’t have the attention she was meant to receive. Towards the end she finally gets the attention she desired. She translated one of her pieces into Spanish, the only language her dad could read. That's how it gained the attention of her father. When her dad finally reads her story, it fills her with joy. At first she didn't get any attention from her dad at all, because she’s a girl. Sandra Cisneros makes a great argument on her life being full of loneliness. Although, she only talks about her perspective on things. In this article she only talks about her side of the story, and her side only. Sandra talks about how her life was as being the only girl out of seven children.

In the short stories Eleven by Sandra Cisneros and On Turning Ten by Billy Collins both authors use multiple literary devices to achieve the theme of aging. In Eleven Sandra Cisneros uses figurative language, symbolism and mood to create the theme of aging. While in On Turning Ten the author uses word choice, figurative language and mood. The two of these authors use these literary devices to add to the theme but in different ways. These short stories both compare and contrast in their ways of achieving the theme of mood through figurative language.

Sandra Cisneros writes a memoir through the eyes of an eleven year old. Turning eleven happens to be a tragic day for the main character, Rachel. Through various literary techniques such as hyperbole, simile, and syntax, Rachel is characterized. Rachel is a fresh turning eleven year old who finds herself in an awful situation on her birthday. Forced to wear a raggedy old sweater that doesn’t belong to her, she makes it defiantly clear her feelings towards the clothing item, and we see this through use of hyperboles. Rachel describes the sweater as ugly and too “stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This extreme exaggeration demonstrates

In the short stories, “Saving Sourdi,” by May-Lee Chai and “The Moths,” by Helena Maria Viramontes, the main character of each short story goes through their own coming of age experience where they are forced to mature in order to overcome an obstacle. Chai explains her main character, Nea’s, struggle as she is forced to mature and overcome the departure of her older sister, Sourdi, from her life after she gets married and moves away. Viramontes, on the other hand, depicts her narrator’s struggle as she is forced to mature and overcome the death of her Abuelita on her own. Despite their very different approaches, both Chai and Viramontes successfully convey their main character 's struggles in their journey from youth to adulthood.

Birthday Party by Katharine Brush is a unique short story that captivates the reader in little words. Brush’s purpose with this story is to bring emotion to the reader, not their own, but a specific emotion, and vivid imagery that seems literal and realistic to the reader. She wanted to put the reader right in the middle of a realistic scene and she does that with few, but clever, literary devices: bland adjectives, the point of view, imagery, and the absence of metaphors and similes. Blunt description and the “dropping off” of the reader into the story without any detailed exposition drives the author successfully towards her purpose for the reader.

Cisneros benefits from her usage of voice to show how Rachel, the main character, struggles with growing up and to help readers relate to her. Rachel describes that “when you wake up you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t” (Cisneros 1). Explaining how she doesn’t feel a year older on her birthday, she says that she expects to. This shows how eager she is to grow up, but she’s impatient at the thought of it. However, although she wishes to be older, growing up doesn’t happen all at once. Rachel also illustrates how she’s eleven, but she says “I wish I was one hundred and two” (Cisneros

Rachel is at the earliest stages of her coming of age, going through what may be one of her first painful rites of passage, and already she is changed. Rachel loses her initial innocence, and is in the throes of developing la facultad, because of the behavior of her teacher, faculty. Cisneros’s protagonist is the embodiment of a character at the early stages of obtaining la facultad. In the “foundational and historically significant text” (Saldivar-Hull, p.1) on the Border, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, author Gloria Anzaldua defines la facultad as, “…the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant “sensing.” A quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning.” (Anzaldua, p. 61) Rachel has learned, that none has told her, that “when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven…” and she wishes she was one hundred and two, “anything but eleven.” Rachel, is as Anzaldua posits regarding a person gaining la facultad, “excruciatingly alive in the world,” (Anzaldua, p. 61) and “the pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it,” (Anzaldua, p. 61) which is why Rachel wishes she was one hundred and

In the short story, “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, a young child named Rachel experienced her eleventh birthday in a classroom. As the story progresses there is a change in the tone- from nonchalant to sadness to anger. Cisneros uses various forms of figurative language throughout “Eleven”, such as repetition, metaphors and similes, and symbolism.

In coming of age stories, the protagonists often experience a pensive and dramatic moment where either they break through to adulthood or retreat to childhood - it is this moment that unveils the magnitude of growing up for the reader.

In the story “Eleven” Sandra Cisneros uses diction and imagery to develop Rachel as shy in order to argue that everybody has value even though some of us are not heard. The last sentence of the 5th paragraph states, “ I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.” This sentence shows us how taciturn she is because she wants to speak, but she just doesn’t know how to say that it wasn’t hers. The text uses imagery to lead us to believe she is shy because it creates a negative picture of a girl just sitting there with her mouth awkwardly open looking like she wants to say something but nothing is coming out. It illustrates to the audience how shy she

Billy Collins’ “On Turning Ten” is a coming of age poem from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy who is unenthusiastic about his tenth birthday. Collins’ “On Turning Ten” uses structural irony to juxtapose childhood with coming of age to suggest that the uneasiness of the inevitable passing of time is difficult to come to terms with, as the imaginative nature of youth is lost. The speaker uses various literary devices to strengthen the use of structural irony throughout the poem.