Eleven

Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1991

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Themes

The Difficult and Uneven Journey to Adulthood

At its core, “Eleven” is a coming-of-age story. These stories typically follow a protagonist’s development over a period of time. In “Eleven,” that period spans a single math class. However, the story’s brevity does not detract from the significance of Rachel’s growth. Although she is humiliated and demoralized in class, this is a formative experience in her journey to adulthood, in that her worldview transitions from youthful to weary. The beginning of this text employs childlike imagery to demonstrate Rachel’s youth even as she considers complex topics like the nature of age. For example, when discussing her own beliefs on age, she thinks of “little wooden dolls” (Paragraph 3), and she compares the ages within her to “pennies in a tin Band-Aid box” (Paragraph 5), evoking imagery of a young child saving spare change. Youth restricts her expression of ideas, but Rachel still engages with and comprehends mature topics, demonstrating that growing up is an uneven process.

Rachel’s word choice further indicates that she is still immature and childlike. The specific mention of “pennies” rather than a coin of a higher monetary value underscores that she is very young, as does her use of the phrase “smart eleven” to convey the idea that simply turning 11 doesn’t automatically convey increased maturity. The repetition that recurs during the rising action also indicates immaturity: When Rachel thinks to herself “not mine, not mine, not mine” in Paragraphs 11 and 13, it brings to mind the speech patterns of very young children who lack the vocabulary to fully express themselves. Again, Rachel’s reflections and sensitivity indicate her burgeoning maturity while illustrating that she still has a long way to go before fully transitioning from child to adult.

The conflict over the red sweater is a formative incident that pushes Rachel closer to maturity. This incident is degrading, and she feels unequipped to handle it, but this moment will help prepare Rachel for similar challenges in adulthood. For example, Rachel wishes she was 102 instead of 11 because then she’d “have known what to stay” (Paragraph 5). However, she later observes that Mrs. Price is “right” simply “because she’s older and the teacher”—not because of any truth or fact (Paragraph 10). This incongruence exposes that adults are not always right and do not always have the answers; realizing and processing this marks another step on Rachel’s journey to maturity.

Rachel repeatedly states her belief that even as a person grows older, all their younger selves still exist, and there will always be times that they feel younger than they are. At the end of the story, she stands on the other side of this belief: Even though she feels younger than she is, she has, with all the burden that comes with age, grown older.

The Dynamic Between Student and Teacher

Another primary theme of this text is the power imbalance between Mrs. Price, who wields authority as a teacher, and Rachel, who is comparatively powerless as a student. As adults, teachers inherently hold more power than minors, but they hold great responsibility due to the nature of their work. Teachers are tasked with broadening a student’s mind, stoking their potential, and encouraging them to find and cultivate their unique voice and point of view. Doing so requires empathy and compassion, as understanding the student’s perspective is key to helping them learn. Mrs. Price, however, takes a more authoritative approach in the classroom, as the red sweater incident makes clear.

In this conflict, Mrs. Price’s authority is unquestionable: She decides what counts as the truth and defines reality. A key facet of injustice, in literature and in the real world, is that it renders marginalized or disadvantaged voices powerless. This is reflected in Mrs. Price’s behavior, as she disregards Rachel’s fumbling protests. Rachel is young and powerless, but Mrs. Price is “older and the teacher,” which inherently means that “she’s right and [Rachel’s] not” (Paragraph 11). But in her quest to assert authority, Mrs. Price overlooks the reality of the situation. She takes the word of others at face value and refuses to allow Rachel to speak up or to help her articulate her defense. She grows convinced that her flawed perception of reality is fact, though her memory of Rachel “wearing [the sweater] once” is a complete fabrication (Paragraph 10). When Rachel pushes back against this perception, Mrs. Price forces her to accept her version of events as reality by commanding that she wear the sweater. When Rachel complies, the truth becomes irrelevant; Mrs. Price has solidified her perception as reality in the classroom.

Her harsh treatment of Rachel, who is disadvantaged due to her age, status, and timidity, has stark consequences. Render voiceless and impotent, Rachel falls into an emotional tailspin: Wishing she was invisible, Rachel hides her face, “all hot and spit coming out of [her] mouth because [she] can’t stop the little animal noises” from escaping until there are no more tears left in her eyes (Paragraph 19). In detailing Rachel’s anguish so vividly, the story emphasizes the sway that adults have over children. If Mrs. Price had been more empathetic, Rachel could have been spared this emotional trauma. Instead, Mrs. Price disregards her entirely; she doesn’t even react as Rachel breaks down before all her peers. She fails to fulfill her duty as a teacher, causing Rachel so much pain she wishes she could float away like a runaway balloon, “so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see it” (Paragraph 22).

Isolation in the Classroom and Society

In this story, Rachel stands alone. As a literary theme, isolation often shows the protagonists a distinct or separate from the whole, standing individually against a cohesive group or society at large. In this text, the classroom serves as society, with Mrs. Price the voice of authority and the other students as judgmental community members. Rachel is distinct from this group; for whatever reason, she is isolated and ostracized by her peers, who do not speak up for her until is too late. Rachel’s sense of isolation worsens throughout the story, as she grows more and more isolated. The only “people” on her side exist solely in her thoughts: Rachel draws strength from her family at home, but they never appear as characters in the text, only in Rachel’s mind. Rachel’s isolation cuts more deeply because she knows that this is not the norm in her life. At home, she is beloved, but in the classroom, she is disempowered and receives no support. What’s more, Rachel’s thoughts of family are ultimately a self-soothing strategy. Her parents are not present to provide physical or even verbal comfort, and this ultimately heightens her sense of isolation. In absence of any other external support, Rachel loses her fight to maintain her composure.

Rachel’s isolation at school is symbolic of the difficult coming-of-age journey. She is loved and cared for at home, and her family will exist as a source of strength and support throughout her life. However, coming of age means learning to navigate the world independently. With the classroom representing broader society, where Rachel must fend for herself, her ordeal in the story reflects the child’s struggle to assert their independence and autonomy. Given Cisneros’s background as the daughter of immigrants, Rachel’s story can also be read as a reflection of the immigrant child’s struggle to navigate life in a strange and unfamiliar culture.

The theme of isolation is enhanced by the story’s limited first-person point of view. Rachel describes her peers—her would-be allies whose betrayal of her reinforces her isolation—as “stupid” and declares that they dislike her (Paragraph 8). Readers are not privy to Sylvia or Phyllis’s perspectives; they have no way of knowing why Sylvia claims the sweater is Rachel’s or why Phyllis waits so long to come forward as the true owner. Their understanding of these characters is filtered through Rachel’s worldview, which paints them as passive bystanders at best or antagonists and aggressors at worst. This effectively puts the audience in the shoes of an 11-year-old girl; the resulting sense of isolation is keen and visceral, as the reader is exposed to the intense anxiety, shame, and despair that stems from being alone in a crowd of united peers.