The boy escapes through his daily schedule of sneaking out of the house at eleven to go to the tool shed, where he waits until “noon come[s]” to sit with the old gardener while he works. There the boy finds solace and happiness through quiet, darkness, and gardening implements.
The boy’s troubled relationship with his family is shown indirectly. The “empty lawn” and the “three chairs on the verandah,” suggest a small family and no other children to play with. The words the child hates“rebellious,” “stupid” –would seem to be words that have been said to him in hostility, implicitly by his parents. The admonition to “think now, think…O but Think,” implies that the boy is not able to.
Perhaps it is this abuse that has caused the child to shut down and avoid using words himself. The fact that he “leave(s) on tiptoe the three chairs on the verandah,”(a symbol of family life) shows his fear and his desire to avoid his family and confrontation. Once he reaches the tool shed, the boy’s thoughts and actions contradict the negative words associated with him at the beginning of the poem.
The boy enters the tool shed with “outstretched fingers,” which suggests trust rather than rebellion. Inside, he sits “on the cool / Hard earth…listening.” In this way, he composes himself and starts to pay attention to his surroundings. The majority of the poem is devoted to describing the tool shed where the boy “(sits), quiet, breathing.” The poet’s descriptions of the tools—implicitly through the boy’s eyes—demonstrate the boy’s thought processes.
The careful description of the “polished helves of picks,” and the “slender tines/ glinting across the curve of the sickles,” shows his careful consideration of the details of his surroundings. The boy’s recognition of the “harsh dry smell of withered bulbs” as well as the “faint/ Odor of dung,” also shows that he is attentive. None of this suggests stupidity or inability to think. The boy connects with tangible objects; to him the objects are a safe replacement for humans. The author’s use of complex language when talking about gardening tools shows the child’s passion for these objects as does his need to touch “the grindstone and behind it the bare wall.”
He is drawn to the objects because they transcend the world of humans: “shapes older than men were, the wise tools.” In considering the way the tools help plants grow and nature reproduce (“the iron / Friendly with the earth”), the boy sees a model for human interaction: benevolent coexistence. When the boy sits “in the corner on the cool/hard earth… listening,” and surrounded by gardening implements, he is able to feel confident, despite the fact that once he leaves his asylum and enters the real world, he will not be understood or loved.
The old gardener, “like/ A priest, like an interpreter,” is seen as a guide to the world that the boy loves. The two, one youthful, one elderly, although contrasted in appearance and with limited communication “They would say nothing,”—form a strong bond and understand each other. The image of the child “(sitting) there/Happy as though he had no name,” shows that it is through this bond that the child is able to be content, as well as grow through his pain. Like the iron and the earth, the boy and the gardener have a relationship of benevolent coexistence.
The structure of the poem replicates the pattern of the boy’s quest for happiness. At the beginning of the poem, the boy escapes the unhappiness of his family life and runs to the shed “pressing out the sunlight from his eyes.” When he enters darkness and solitude, “the dazzled shadow in the room,” he composes himself and begins to interact with his surroundings. The last stanza of the poem is separated because it is in a different environment in which the boy is happy. The gardener’s presence completes the boy’s non-threatening world of inanimate objects and nature. This allows the child to grow, aided but unnoticed, “like a leaf, (like) a stem, /like a root growing.”
Eleven attempts to understand the mental world of a troubled boy. Although the boy is called ‘stupid’, his actions and thoughts prove him calm, attentive, and insightful. The boy creates a fictional world to deal with his problems, a world where humans merely coexist. When the gardener comes to the shed, the boy’s dreams are actualized and he is finally content. Hence, Eleven is a moving description of a boy’s attempt to find safety, comfort, and solace.
