Rachel

Character Analysis

Rachel is the protagonist of "Eleven," and it's her eleventh birthday. You know what that means: Get ready for a story filled with presents and festivities and cake. Wait…not quite.

Unfortunately, after a long and embarrassing day at school, we seriously doubt even a chocolate cake could turn this birthday around for Rachel—which is a total bummer because chocolate cake and tears do not mix well together. Trust us, we've been there before and it's not pretty.

Mature for Her Age

This first thing you'll notice about Rachel is that she has some really mature ideas for an eleven year old. You remember turning eleven, right? You jumped out of bed, feeling every bit older. "Hanging out with ten year olds? Pshhht," you'd say. "That was soooo last year." Or maybe that was just us…we were pretty impatient to grow up.

But listen to Rachel explain what it feels to wake up as an eleven year old:

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is 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. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday. (1)

Rachel's trying to explain that people aren't made as a result of their experiences; they are their experiences. Even when you're eleven, you're still ten-year-old you too, because that experience of being ten never goes away. It's a part of you like layers in "an onion" or "the rings inside a tree trunk" (3). We don't know about you, but we think that's a pretty mature concept for a young girl to think up.

But Rachel doesn't see the value in her thoughts. She laments:

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 (5).

Here, we see that Rachel believes being older and being right go hand-in-hand—or, if not being right, then at least being able to convince others of your rightness. The tragedy of Rachel's story is that we know her thoughts have worth. We know she could think of something to say to Mrs. Price, whether she is eleven, one hundred and two, or anything between.

Speak Up!

Rachel is a shy, timid, and bashful little kid. The girl has amazing thoughts, but the embarrassing situation with the red sweater has left her dumbfounded and unable to speak them. Each failed attempt to speak those thoughts makes the second even more difficult.

The first time Rachel tries to deny owning the sweater, she manages to splutter:

That's not, I don't, you're not … Not mine. (10)

Hardly a convincing argument, but in her mind, she's thinking:

Not mine, not mine, not mine. (12)

Thanks to her first-person narration, we see that her thoughts are much more assertive and definitive than her verbal arguments.

When Mrs. Price demands she wear the sweater, Rachel attempts to argue again but is cut off by the teacher. Forced to put it on, everything Rachel has "been holding in since [the] morning […] finally lets go," and she cries "until there aren't any more tears left in [her] eyes, and it's just [her] body shaking like when you have the hiccups" (19).

Unable to speak up, Rachel cries, the ultimate verbal expression of sadness. Unfortunately, it is also the most embarrassing one, and Rachel wishes to be invisible. Even after Phyllis Lopez admits the sweater is hers, it doesn't help. Rachel's birthday is ruined (21).

The Spirit of the Birthday

What attracts us to a character like Rachel is that we can relate. We've all been there. We know exactly what to say in a given situation, but we just can't speak the words. Or worse, we come up with the perfect comeback way too late to do anything about it (what the French call l'esprit de l'escalier, or, "staircase wit")

Unfortunately for Rachel, she's still learning that this is a part of life. As such, she believes her birthday is ruined, and she wants the day 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). And on that sad image of a lost balloon, her story ends.

Ewe Are My Sunshine

Rachel's name also clues us in to important aspects of her character. The name originates from the Old Testament, where Rachel is the second wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, who would become patriarchs of two of the twelve tribes of Israel (source). Writing for the Jewish Women's Archive, Tikva Frymer-Kensky notes that the Biblical character is the "classic mother who mourns and intercedes for her children" and "died young [to become] an image of tragic womanhood."

The Rachel of "Eleven" may not have had children, but there seems to be a connection here. Our character cries in embarrassment, and her tragedy is part of the process of growing up into womanhood.

But we see an even more interesting connection is in the name's meaning. Rachel comes from the Hebrew meaning "ewe," a female sheep, especially a grown-up one. This is simply the perfect name for her. First, it hints at her sheepish personality. After all, sheep are famous for accepting the bellwether's lead and not speaking up. Also, since an ewe is typically a mature sheep, it ties in with Rachel's coming of age story. She's no longer a lamb.

Only unlike the sheep, whose wool is taken to make hideously ugly red sweaters, Rachel is forced to wear the hideously ugly red sweater. There's kind of a circle of life thing going here, isn't there?