In many ways, the ending to "Eleven" is pretty straightforward. Rachel is shamed at school because Mrs. Price forces her to wear an ugly red sweater. Eventually Phyllis Lopez remembers (admits?) it is her sweater, but only after Rachel has broken down and cried in front of the entire class. Sure, she's going to get cake and presents after school, but you don't just bounce back from that kind of embarrassment. Her birthday is ruined. Plain and simple.
Still, hold tight—there are two aspects of this ending that require a more detailed analysis. Have your harmonicas ready and make sure it's in the key of C because Rachel's—
Got Them Protagonist Blues
The first thing we noticed when finishing the story is that it doesn't end well for the protagonist, and this is an unusual choice given that—by Cisneros' own admission—this story was written for children.
Children's stories generally turn out okay for their child protagonists. Sure, they may have to learn a difficult life lesson along the way, but these types of stories tend to end in that upbeat tempo suggesting everything is going to be okay. There are exceptions to the rule, to be sure, but we feel it is safe to say that most readers of children stories expect a happy ending.
Not so here. After the red sweater incident, Rachel reminds herself that it is her eleventh birthday, and the evening will be full of cake and presents and well wishes. But even while imagining the birthday party to come, she admits to herself, "[…] it's too late" (21). Nothing will fix what happened at school and chances are she'll have to live with it for the rest of the school year. What a bummer.
It's a truthful downer though. Just because it is your birthday doesn't mean bad things can't happen. It's a horrible lesson for Rachel to learn and one that doesn't come with a happy ending. Yet this type of ending also has a ring of truth to it, too.
The Lone Red Balloon
Now let's analyze that final, enigmatic paragraph – which is about 98 red balloons shy of a truly rocking time. To refresh your memory, it goes a little something like this:
I'm eleven today. I'm eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. 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. (22)
So what's going on here? For starters, Rachel is returning to the notion she began the story with—the idea that you are all of your respective ages wrapped up into one person. She's also reminding us that she wishes she were 102-years-old because then she'd have enough years to have known what to do during that red sweater situation.
The balloon takes these two notions and smushes them into a symbol that represents Rachel's day, and it's no coincidence that the balloon and the sweater that ruined her day are the same color: red.
A run away balloon in the sky is a huge distance away from its owner; in the same way, this awful eleventh birthday would be far away from Rachel if she were 102. One is distant in space, the other in time, but in both instances, they are far, far away. Still, just because she is 102 doesn't mean her eleventh birthday will no longer be a part of her either. Like the balloon, it may be lost and far away, but it won't be forgotten.
When she says she wants to "have to close [her] eyes to see" the balloon, she's basically saying she wants this day to be a memory, a bad memory that is so tiny she has to try really hard to bring it up.