Eleven And Losing Face Essay

You encounter many events in your life. Some may be bad, while others can be good. Some events affect us so much that we remember them throughout our whole life. Some events can even affect your whole life. In the short story “Eleven,” by Sandra Cisneros, and the poem “Losing Face,” by Janet Wong , the events in the characters’ lives affect them in different ways. The short story is about Rachel, a girl who is eleven, but doesn’t feel like she is that age when she encounters an issue at school. Her teacher assumes that the ugly and raggedy sweater is Rachel’s when it is not. When her teacher, Mrs.Price gets peeved, she tells Rachel to wear the sweater and then Rachel starts sobbing and feels like she is three years old. The poem is about a girl who cheated on an art contest to make her mother proud. Then she wants to tell her mother the truth, but also doesn’t want to lose her mother's proud face. The characters’ lives are affected by events in the short story and the poem both positively and negatively.

In “Eleven” it states that, “...but I wish I was 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.” This demonstrates that Rachel was so sad about the day, that she wants her birthday to be gone. She would become really negative about her eleventh birthday and would be really sad anytime she thought about it. In “Losing Face” states that, “I feel awful. I want to tell.” This shows that the speaker of the poem is always going to have the guilt that she cheated on an art contest. Both characters feel bad and don’t feel