by Athena Garner

Created on: July 16, 2008   Last Updated: June 17, 2010

In the piece "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros, she describes a bad experience on her eleventh birthday. Her storytelling is clear and descriptive, yet still quite childish. Despite the fact that she expresses childish wishes, the narrator has a certain degree of wisdom. Cisneros' narrator has emotions that are childish, but an insight that goes beyond her years.

The narrator of "Eleven" sounds very much like an adolescent girl. Many girls at that age would have trouble correcting someone about a mistake in front of the class. The problem may not be that she is too shy to do it, or doesn't want to contradict the teacher. The problem may simply be that the mortification of the experience is too much for her to muster her thoughts and voice. In leading up to this part of the story, she says, "Only today I wish I didn't have eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I'd have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk." The simile of her years inside her like pennies in a Band-Aid box seems very childlike. Only a child would think of something like that; she no doubt used to shake penny-filled boxes around for fun. The fact that she brings up the age "one hundred and two" is also striking. Children never do anything by half. She couldn't just say "one hundred" because that wouldn't sound old enough to her. But the addition of two extra years makes is appropriately wise and mature for her to long for.

Perhaps the most childish comment the narrator makes is, "I wish I was anything but eleven, because 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." This is an interesting sentence with a wonderful description, but it is still the sentiment of a child. The concept of being a far away balloon sounds very much like something a child would express.

In "Eleven", the narrator, despite her age, expresses ideas that illustrate her wisdom. The very concept of at the same time being all the ages you have reached is interesting and not entirely childish. She says, "when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one." This is true in a way. You certainly know what it is like to feel all those ages because you have been them. I don't think this is a concept most children

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