Sandra Cisneros, an author who is deeply inspired by her Mexican American heritage. This inspiration is clearly shown throughout every one of her writing pieces such as “Salvador Late or Early” and “Eleven”. Both short-stories focus on adolescents with a mature mindset and adult precision, and each story does a marvelous job portraying Cisneros constant writing style. “Salvador Late or Early” is focusing on a young boy, Salvador, with heavy burdens to carry on his shoulders, which is unfortunate because he is such a young boy with an old soul. The responsibilities he has are unimaginable due to the fact they don’t pertain to his age. The short-story “Eleven” is about an eleven-year-old girl named Rachel, a forthright character who explains …show more content…
However, the way Rachel narrates the short-story represents her mature perspective and adult precision. Each story written by Sandra Cisneros both show the point of view from which the story is told and the effect it has on the thematic purposes, the characterization and diction present in the stories, and the stylistic choice chosen by Cisneros, which is figurative language. In “Salvador Late or Early”, it is a third-person point of view. In the short-story, it provides a visual of Salvador as a scrawny, ugly boy. However, the narrator describes him as not what meets the eye; he is a tough young boy who is responsible and mature. This is a perfect example of why it is wrong to make assumptions of people. If the point of view was different, and one was knowledgeable of the fact that Salvador is worth more than what he seems, then all he would be is a boy with “eyes the color of a caterpillar” and “of the crooked hair and crooked teeth,” (Paragraph 1). The point of view from which the story is told evidently affects the thematic …show more content…
“Salvador Late or Early” includes figurative language all throughout the short-story. For example, “Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar,” (Paragraph 1, Line 1) is a metaphor suggesting metamorphosis and even though he is a caterpillar stuck inside its cocoon, he will soon become a beautiful, graceful butterfly. This metaphor gives rise to the artistic voice and thematic meaning because the message this short-story is trying to send is that no matter how worthless one may feel and if they think that they’ll never have enough power to hatch out of their cocoon, in the end, they will always become the beautiful, graceful butterfly they were all along. Another example of figurative language in “Salvador Late or Early” is a metaphor in paragraph 2: “Arturito has dropped the cigar box of crayons, has let go the hundred little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue, and nub of black sticks that tumble and spill over and beyond the asphalt puddles…” This symbolizes a rainbow after a storm, and the deeper meaning behind this symbolism is that although Salvador is caught in the middle of a brutal storm, the sun will soon come out and he will find a rainbow. One example of figurative language in “Eleven” is when Rachel uses similes such as “Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little
“His nation chewed him up and spat him out like a pinon shell, and when he emerged from an airplane one late afternoon, I knew I would one day make love with him” (Martinez, 3). And so it starts, the story of a nineteen year old Mexican- American girl named Mary (Maria; as he only chooses to call her), who helps out and eventually falls in love with Jose Luis Alegria, a Salvadoran refugee. Martínez's story of María is told against the backdrop of the 12-year civil war in El Salvador. Maria and Jose Luis develop a friendship that slowly turns into a typical novella love affair. Through their relationship, both characters are forced to confront the violence of their
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.
Poverty and stress take away the pleasures of childhood from the children unfortunate to be born into such families. In Salvador Late or Early, a short story by Sandra Cisneros, tells us about the stressful lifestyle of an underprivileged boy named Salvador. Salvador The author believes Salvador is an interesting character because he’s a boy with responsibilities of an adult, he is a solitary and misunderstood kid at school, and because throughout all the pain and suffering he’s been through, he remains unbroken.
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
Sonia Nazario composes the story of a boy named Enrique. His life changes when his mother leaves him and his sister in Honduras as she travels to America to make a better life for herself and send money back to them. Enrique does not understand why his mother left him; he begins to rebel against his family and use drugs. Soon, his girlfriend is pregnant and Enrique must go to America to get money to support them. He attempts his journey seven times before he is successful. Enrique is robbed, beaten, and sent back to Honduras. On the eighth try he successfully makes it to his mother. He is quickly disappointed in what his mother has accomplished in America and starts drug use again. Soon, Enrique has to get clean to support his child in Honduras and he sends money for his girlfriend to meet him in America. His daughter is left in Honduras, continuing the cycle that many families struggle with. The authors use of logos and pathos enables the reader to take a deeper look of what is immigration.
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.
She gets excited when boys look at her on the streets. But her illusion of true love is destroyed by sexual violence. Her friend Sally’s behaviour towards boys contributes to Esperanza’s caution and distance by dealing with the opposite sex, too. Nevertheless, Esperanza does not stop dreaming of leaning against a car with her boyfriend in a place where that does not bother anyone. But she has set her standards higher than most of the women around her. She do not search for a man to escape from this place, she has seen too many unhappy marriages. Ruthie exemplifies such an one. She has run away from her husband and seems to be mentally disturbed. The young Rafaela is locked up by her husband because of her beauty. Nevertheless the tragic event is Sally’s which ends in abuse. Sally, Esperanza’s friend, only wanted to dream and share her love like Esperanza. Hurt and beaten by her father who just wanted to prevent the familiy’s ruin by Sally. To escape, despite of her minority, she marries a salesman. But unlike her wish, the abuse continues.
Often in literature, authors create plot by writing about characters maturing throughout the story. One work that explores childhood to adulthood is The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. In this novella, Esperanza Cordero is a young girl who lives in a poverty stricken area in Chicago. During the story, Esperanza grows up from being an adolescent to a young adult. In the novella, the theme is that losing innocence brings about maturity. Cisneros expresses Esperanza growing up by juxtaposing vignettes. Tone is also used to enhance the change in Esperanza’s thoughts while maturing. Both the juxtaposition of vignettes and tone support the theme that the loss of innocence and the gaining of
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].
There views were different and often clashed. Her desire to be who she truly desired to become, compares to the first short story. Sandra wrote, and wrote, and wrote. She had journals, papers, essays, you name it she wrote it. Her family on the other hand, did not read her writing. They were not interested, nor were they capable of reading them due to the language barrier.
Louis Hémon creates a story of the rural life in a family of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, the Chapdelaine’s. He uses the climate and traditional values in a way in which the novel still has an ironic and crucial element. Also, the beginning of the novel on Ite, missa est[1] is (“the mass”) a claim on religious behaviour, a main theme in this novel. Maria Chapdelaine, a novel personifying the spirit of French Canada at its most romantic, was written by
“My Name” by Sandra Cisneros is a short excerpt from her book The House on Mango Street (1984). In this excerpt, Cisneros narrator is a girl named Esperanza, who is telling us that her name reminds her of a lot of negatives things, including who she inherited it from. Esperanza is trying to convince us that her name is a terrible name, which is built up of negativity and bad history. She state that she was named after her great-grandmother, who was born in the Chinese year of the horse, which they have in common, and is well known for her wild customs which lead to her feeling sad and lonely all her life. Esperanza specifies that her name sound beautiful among Spanish speakers, but to non-Spanish speakers her name is pronoun funny “as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth” she says. She indicated that she would like to baptize herself under a new
Sandra Cisneros demonstrates a challenge that is not obviously to overcome for a young child, in other words one can say that it is remarkable to undertake such responsibility by awaking the older women about their sufferings for an improvement and by keeping watch over her sister constitutes the most important task for her and this act demonstrates she does not neglect her family even she care about her neighbors welfare but. This double responsibility are important aspects for allowing to provide relevant evidences that depict the early responsibility throughout the protagonist Esperanza
Thesis: In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek,” Sandra Cisneros emphasizes the importance of having a female figure to look up to in order to overcome the oppression women are subjected to in a patriarchal society.
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.