Literary Devices In Eleven By Sandra Cisneros

Eleven is a story that talks about a little girl named Rachel who turns eleven, but feels as if she is anything but. She says it takes her months before she can remember that she is in fact, eleven. The author also says that we will never just be one age we will be three sometimes and cry and cry until our hearts ache no more. Or sometimes you need someone to hold you and tell you everything is okay, this part of you is five. In the short story ‘Eleven’ the author uses many literary devices like figurative language, imagery, and repetition.

Have you ever looked back on something you did as a kid, or the past in general and regretted something you did or should have done but didn’t do it? Well The author Sandra Cisneros captures that feeling well in eleven by using stylistic techniques such as characterization, personification, and imagery to sound like a young child. The character Rachel is a personified avatar of Sandra's emotions.

Imagery is another literary technique that is used to characterize Rachel. In the incident over the red sweater, Rachel states, “That’s not, I don’t, you’re not… Not mine.” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe when I was four. “From this line, a picture is painted through words to show Rachel’s facial expression and her reaction to having to admit that the sweater belonged to her. Cisneros also paints a picture of Rachel when she states, “all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody”; in reference to Rachel having to wear “the ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope”. From that statement, Cisneros shows how sad and upset Rachel was about having to put on that sweater.

In the text it states "I moved the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler." This shows that Rachel acted like a child because only children like to move weird or discusting things with something that's not their hand. Also, this shows that Rachel was scared of touch the sweater because she felt embaressed by Mrs.Price.

This inner defiance gives evidence to Rachel’s determination and individuality. The sweater now represents a sort of barrier and if she submits herself to it, she fears the world of ages and maturity.

Rachel is first introduced into the play at the very beginning where we see she has gone to the jail to visit her boyfriend Bert Cates. Rachel is very desperate to try and get Bert to just throw himself at the mercy of the court and admit that what he did was wrong. She just wants to be with him. As she enters the jail she speaks to Meeker saying “Mr Meeker, don’t let my father know I came here”, This quote portrays Rachel’s character very well. She is shy and lacks confidence, obviously worried of what would happen if her father found out she was visiting Cates, the enemy to her father at this point. She has lived her life in fear of her father and because of she followed everything

Rachel’s Tears has a lot of significant symbols and pictures, however I choose to make her eyes and the rose the main symbol. I choose this picture because the book is in a significant way named after the picture she drew before she died, which are the eyes and rose. The thirteen tears represent how many students died on April 20,1999. The reason the tears are watering a plant is because, when the students died they brought life to people they had never met. Their deaths changed people’s lives forever. The eyes represent Rachel’s eyes. I have decided to use two quotes from the book, because they were the most commonly used ones in the book. When Rachel said that she was unashamed about her faith and what she believed, she was also willing

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].

As the story goes on, readers learn more about Rachel having a wide variety of emotions, to begin with. The colonial times may be a rough time for Rachel, but it shows how she overcomes it. It also contains many life-solving choices without even hints or details. This recommendation of this book contains many life risks and

Rachel grew up in a house hold where she had to grow up really quick. In her early teenage years she witnesses her mom struggle through abusive relationships with her step dad and other boyfriends that came after. She eventually became an alcoholic. By the time Rachel was 13 year old, she dropped out of school to take the role of the emotional and financial care taker of her mother. Living in her

Rachel Rebeccah Price is a true child of the western world and the 1960’s, she cares about her clothes, what her social status is, and most importantly-- her looks. As the Prices first arrive to the Congo Rachel stands firm on her belief that she will never adapt to the Congo such as her family has. Before leaving her town of Bethlehem, Georgia, Rachel had the most exposure to a western based upbringing and also the least attention from her preoccupied parents. This leaves her self centered and very stuck in her American way of life, Rachel relies more on herself to survive in Kilanga than she does her own family. She’s a strong resistant figure in the novel who often looks down on the natives, but not in a condescending way such as her father but more in a patronizing way that originates from confusion and misplaced anger on her behalf. If someone

In “Eleven”, the author Sandra Cisneros uses word choice, imagery, and style to help convey Rachel as a skeptical, agitated, and dubious person. The literary techniques that the author conveys helps the readers understand Rachel for who she is. Through the literary devices that the author uses he highlights the characteristics of her without specifically stating what type of person she is. This allows for a great short story about a girl and her feelings about

Rachel’s teacher, Mrs.Price, tries to find out whose red sweater it is and comes up with Rachel. Mrs.Price has a different view of the red sweater. She is thinking, “This red sweater has been in my closet and I want it out now.” Some of the words and phrases she uses to help me come to this conclusion include, “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.” It also says, “Of course it’s yours.” Finally it says, “Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right.”That explains her impatient character because she just wants it out so the first person that it might be, it is going with them. Rachel also has a hard time telling Mrs.Price her story.

Early in the novel, Rachel noticed a pile of clothes on the side of the trains and begins to think of who passed away on the trains. Later in the middle of the novel she has a dream of the same clothing on the train tracks of the night of Megan disappearance. If there is clothing on the side of the train without a body it foreshadows the dangers that will happen in the story and for the author to remind the reader they cannot understand everything. In the end of the novel Rachel kills Tom with a corkscrew killing two birds with one stone. Rachel has been having a alcohol problem for years which killing Tom persuaded her to get rid of her drinking

The next two times Cisneros presents the reader with a simile is to reference the red sweater. After the teacher had put the sweater on Rachel’s desk, she talks about feeling sick and wanting that feeling to go away, but when she opens her eyes and, “the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain” (n.p.), she begins to think about how to get rid of the sweater. Before she is able to accomplish this Mrs. Price notices how, “it’s hanging over the edge like a waterfall” (n.p.), and demands that Rachel put the sweater on. After this incident, Rachel buries her face in her, “stupid clown-sweater arms” (n.p.). As mentioned earlier the collar and sleeves of the sweater are stretched out. The last use of similes and metaphors in, “Eleven,” is found in the last sentence of the story- “ I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny tiny you have to close your eyes to see it” (n.p.). Cisneros is comparing the distance a balloon will travel away from its owner to the distance she wishes this day was away from her.