Eleven CommonLit Answer Key 2023 [FREE Access]

In this session, we will be bringing you the updated answers for CommonLit Eleven topic.

Eleven CommonLit Answer Key

Let us first read Eleven passage and will answer at the end.

Note: Feel free to skip reading the below passage if you are here to get just answers. Both the questions and answers are shared below.

Eleven
By, Sandra Cisneros was born in 1954 and raised on Chicago’s South Side, the only daughter in a family with six sons. While studying writing at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978, Cisneros realized that perspectives of Chicanas (Mexican-American women) were not represented in mainstream American literature.

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, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. 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. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.

“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”

“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.”

“It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.

Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldívar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.

“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not…Not mine,” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.

“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.

Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember that today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.

But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.

In my head, I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it across the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees that I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.

“Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.”

“Now!” Mrs. Price says.

This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven, because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes… [CONTINUE READING FROM MAIN SITE ITSELF]

Let us now discuss CommonLit Eleven answers to the questions asked:

 

Q1. Explain the narrator’s view on getting older?

Ans: It’s just the next day, you feel the same way you did when you were 10. It’s as if you are 10, 9, 8, 7, 6.

 

Q2. How is the onion or a tree trunk a symbol?

Ans: Everyone has layers or rings as they age. They are 11 , 10, 9 , 8….etc

 

Q3. Why didn’t Rachel stand up to the teacher and insist that the sweater wasn’t hers?

Ans: Because she doesn’t feel as old as she is. She is shy timid and doesn’t fee; like she can stand up to the teacher who is older than her.

 

Q4. Why did Rachel wish she was anything but Eleven?

Ans: Because she needed to be 102 and as far away from the experience of that day as possible

 

Q5. What is the worst thing that happened on Rachel’s birthday?

Ans: She was humiliated in class by being forced to put on the red sweater

 

Q6. What was an example of imagery?

Ans: Growing up is like the layers of an onion

 

Q7. What is an objective summary of the story, Eleven?

Ans: Rachel turns eleven and she does not feel her age. A teacher gets angry because a sweater has been sitting in the closet for a month. A girl says it’s Rachel’s. Teacher makes Rachel take it. Rachel pushes it to the corner of her desk because it’s disgusting and not hers. At the end of class, the teacher tells her to put it on. Rachel puts it on – and it upsets her, yet she can’t speak up for herself. And all at once, her three-year-old emotions come out – and she starts to cry in front of the class. Then another girl says it’s actually hers.Tonight she’ll have her birthday cake – but she’s not excited about it.

 

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