Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
The imagery employed in "Eleven" is perfectly, exactly, totally what you'd expect an eleven year old to use. When trying to describe concepts that are just out of her reach, Rachel often uses similes to help her get the point across. Here are a couple of examples of what we're talking about:
- When trying to explain how you can be three, ten, and eleven years old at the same time, Rachel says it is like "an onion," "the rings inside a tree trunk," and "my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other" (3).
- When trying to show that her youthful years are too few in number, she says it is "like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box" (5)
- Rachel calls the red sweater a "big red mountain" (13), and says it "smells like cottage cheese" (18) to convey just how humiliating and revolting it is.
- To describe how painful the crying is, Rachel claims the shakes are "like when you have the hiccups" and her head hurts "like when you drink milk too fast" (19).
- Rachel wishes the day would end and be far away "like a runaway balloon" (22).
This imagery serves two purposes in the story. First, it really helps you believe this is an eleven year old telling the story. This voice doesn't feel like an adult writer putting his or her words in a child narrator's mouth, and these images help construct a world coming from a child's point of view.
Second, these images help construct a central concept of the short story: Children may not have the words to express great philosophical ideas but that doesn't mean they don't have great ideas.
Rachel's idea that "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" is a really complex and interesting thought (1). She may not have the shiny words to explain the idea the way a psychologist might (identity formation, anyone?), but the imagery of the tree trunk and Band-Aid box help her get across the feeling of the idea even if she doesn't have the words and definitions at her disposal.