Lindsey Cassinelli
IB/Honors English 11
Mrs. Henle
6 November 2002
Age DOES Matter
Many adults agree that children today are growing up too fast. Currently, children are beginning to mature at earlier ages than in the past. In Sandra Cisneros’s short story, “Eleven,” the protagonist, Rachel, is one of these children. Rachel is a dynamic character who wakes up on her eleventh birthday to find that she still feels ten years old. Rachel questions the significance of age eleven when at school, she gets humiliated in front of her class by her teacher, and wishes she were older so she would know how to handle the situation. Through Cisneros’s use of elementary similes, repetition, and imagery, Rachel’s childlike characteristics are revealed.
Rachel’s young perspective on life is exposed through the comparisons she makes. Rachel feels no change when she turns eleven and describes growing “like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.” The relationship between dolls and young girls shows Rachel’s childish personality. When Rachel begins to feel nervous she wishes she “didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside [her] like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.” This comparison is typical of a child in that they usually associate money with counting pennies and playing games with them. Cisneros also uses a familiar object known to young children when Rachel says that her sweater is “all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This comparison is typical of a child because a jump rope is often a toy in which young girls like to play
