Summary Of Richard Rodriguez 's ' The Achievement Of Desire ' Essay

Rodriguez begins to become more involved in his classroom by his new grip on the English language. He shares fewer and fewer words with his mother and father. His tone now transforms into guilt. As Rodriguez's public language becomes more fluent, he forgets how to speak Spanish. "I would have been happier about my public success had I not recalled, sometimes, what it had been like earlier, when my family conveyed its intimacy through a set of conveniently private sound.? He begins to break out of the cocoon as a slow or disadvantaged child and blooms into a regular kid in his white society that only uses English. He feels a great sense of betrayal of his Mexican past. His connection that held him so close to his family is destabilized.

In his essay, “The Achievement of Desire,” Richard Rodriguez informs readers that he was a scholarship boy throughout his educational career. He uses his own personal experiences, as well as Richard Hoggart’s definition of the “scholarship boy,” to describe himself as someone who constantly struggles with balancing his life between family and education, and ends up on the side of education. In recognizing himself as a “scholarship boy,” he shows that he has gained what sociologist C. Wright Mills terms the “sociological imagination,” which “enables its possessor to understand the larger

Rodriguez was torn apart his “private” life and his “public” life. Private as in referring to the language spoken and home and the Spanish heritage at home. Public as in referring to his quite life at school where Rodriguez was intimidated by “high syllables” and the way people talked fast English. This quote illustrated how the need of

I find it interesting that while Rodriguez and Anzaldua came from comparable backgrounds they feel very differently about similar issues. Rodriguez believes that education should not be bilingual for children who come from Spanish speaking homes. Anzaldua on the other hand thinks that people should not be squashing the culture of these people, and should do what they can to help them preserve it. I think that in that sense one could compare Anzaldua and Rodriguez to the idea of American culture, as each are one extreme of how we view it. On the one hand we have Anzaldua, the idea that America is a melting pot, combining all of the different cultures of the different people living here to come up

In the beginning, Rodriguez would simply correct his parent?s grammatical errors. He also proudly tells his parents that his teacher said that he is losing any traces of a Spanish accent. Soon, his parents can no longer help him with his homework. His family starts to jokingly make fun of him for reading so much. Rodriguez recalls that sometimes his mother would approach him while studying and try to talk to him. But he responded coldly to her inquiries. ?Instead of the flood of intimate sounds that had once flowed smoothly between [them], there was this silence,? (51). He feels that spending time with his family is a waste, or it could be better spent studying. Rodriguez loses the intimate connection he has with his parents, especially his mother. This is detrimental to his emotional well being because it contributes to his seclusion. However, Rodriguez is not truly in solitude until he actively pursues it.

This separation from his family caused a longing in his life. But this longing was superseded by what he suspected his teachers could give him. Rodriguez develops a double personality of sorts. The person he is at home, the polite child who lovingly does what his parents ask of him. And then the academic persona he

When reading this autobiography it reminded me of my adolescent years; I remember feeling like I knew all there was to being a grown up, I also felt like my parents didn’t know much because they didn’t go to college. I strongly feel like they could have always done more than they were doing. Upon reading this, I felt as though I was reading Richard Rodriguez’s journal and he was a very unhappy kid living in the ghetto. He was also embarrassed of his own life and he seemed unhappy in his own skin... “(Ways of reading pg.339) A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn’t forget that success was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student”.

To begin with, Rodriguez’s first step to finding his identity began when his parents decided to move to the states to start a new life. At first, he was completely lost because he couldn’t understand the language. However, as time went by his English began to improve with the help of his parents helping him practice English at home. As he becomes more educated, he felt that a distance grew between him and his parents. “Here is a child who cannot forget that his academic success distances him from a life he loved, even from his own memory of himself” (Rodriguez 51). Rodriguez was connected with his family through his private identity. However, his distance with his parents began to appear as he advanced in English. As he starts to become fluent in English, he would talk to his parents less and less. His Spanish skills also started to deteriorate. Spanish is the language that gave him a sense of closeness to his family and is what separated him from the public. However, once he started to develop his public identity, he started losing his private identity. Rodriguez’s parents provided him with his own private identity and help him and supported him in developing his public identity to success.

The particular focus of Rodriguez’s story is that in order to feel like he belonged to the “public society” he had to restrict his individuality. Throughout his story, Rodriguez discussed such topics as assimilation and heritage. He goes into depth about the pros and the cons of being forced to assimilate to the American culture. Growing up Hispanic in America was a struggle for Rodriguez. This was due to the fact that he was a Spanish-speaking boy living in an English-speaking society, and he felt like he was different than the other children. Rodriguez writes, “I was fated to be the ‘problem student’ in class” (Rodriguez 62). This is referring to Rodriguez’s improper knowledge of English. It made him stand out as the kid that was behind. He wanted to find the balance between the public and private face. He believed both were important to develop. As I read this story it changed the way I looked at people who speak different languages, and how it must be hard to fit in with society if you are not all fluent in English.

The reader can agree with though with Rodriguez’s idea that not knowing the public language is a disadvantage to private language speakers and that bilingual education causes distant families.

With all the negative thoughts and feelings about his family, Rodriguez never took the time to repair his relationship with him and his family, because books were very important to him than his family. As Rodriguez begin to separate from his family and culture, his Spanish accent also begin to disappear, which he felt very excited. In the beginning of his article he talked about the first day, he enters the class and could “barely able to speak English” (239). Rodriguez felt that he did not fit in with the rest

Rodriguez's autobiography also portrays the social and economic problems with affirmative action for the "privileged" minority student. He reports, "In the late 1960s nonwhite Americans clamored for access to higher education, and I became a principal beneficiary of the academy's response, its programs of affirmative action" (143). Ironically, the author now regrets having been involved with (or forced into) accepting the "assistance" these programs offered: "For me there is no way to say it with grace. I say it rather with irony sharpened with self-pity. I say it with anger. It is a term that should never have been foisted on me. One I was wrong to accept" (143). Potential students from the lowest socioeconomic groups were not even considered by institutions of higher learning simply because the colleges only looked at the boxes checked on applications, and not the actual student's financial needs. The author explains, "Most blacks simply couldn't afford tuition for higher education. And, because the primary and secondary schooling blacks received was usually poor, few qualified for admission. Many were so culturally alienated that they never thought to apply; they couldn't even imagine themselves going to

Through the narrative “The Scholarship Boy” I find few turning points that I notice a shift in the demeanor of Richard Rodriguez as well as how I perceive the story. First of all, it is made apparent to me that people acknowledge him for his successes by making remarks such as, “Your parents must be proud” or “How did you manage it? According to the opening paragraphs Rodriguez is seen as a model student. Although this may be true, the first turning point I find suggests otherwise as Rodriguez conveys, “For although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student…Always successful, always unconfident. Exhilarated by my process. Sad.” This quote changed my perspective of Rodriguez because of the negative emotion he expresses toward his family. By the same token, I recall my sister being an outstanding achiever throughout school, yet, she was similarly depressed as well as annoyed towards me and the rest of our family. This flashback assisted me in relating to Rodriguez’s emotions towards his successes. In the same fashion, I am supplied a grasp of his shift in tone and direction in the narrative.

Being a first generation college student is a heavy load to carry due to the constant reminder of having to be a good role model for my siblings. Children of immigrants are often highly expected to excel in their academics and to be involved in extracurricular activities. His/her parent immigrated to the “Land of The Free” in order to receive a better life and to give their children a place to call home. They work from one to two jobs a week just so that we can dig through the pantry, and raid the refrigerator. We sometimes take our parents for granted unknowingly, and constantly fill our heads with a question that we all seem to ask. “How do I please my parents?”, “What do I have to do to make them happy?”. As students we should all be voicing “College!”. Yes, maybe our folks’s dreams have faded away, however that should be our motivation to aim higher; to achieve our American Dream. Throughout our years of education, our very own relatives and teachers have emphasized on the importance of receiving a higher education. I have come to realize that I should not be asking myself “How do I please my parents?”. Instead, “How do I please myself?”, “What will my lifetime goals be?”, “Will it leave my parents hard work in vain?”. Obtaining a higher education will not impact their lives, but will affect yours drastically. My American Dream has always been to become an immigration lawyer that deals with international relations or to become a professor teaching my true passion for

In the narrative called ‘Scholarship Boy’, by Richard Rodriguez. One can say that the biggest turning point is when Mr. Rodriguez himself realizes, at the age of thirty. The biggest attribute to his success and determination is schooling as a young boy. This is when Mr. Rodriguez had to live two separate lives. One as a young boy eager and willing to learn and develop, and another as a son and sibling to his family. At the age of thirty he finally is able to come to terms with this fact and be able to talk about in public and not have to keep it bottled up any longer. During this time in his life he is writing his dissertation and finds a written piece by Richard Hoggarts called, ‘The Scholarship Boy’. At this point in his life he sees that he is not alone with his life struggles. This was figuratively like lifting weights off of Mr. Rodriguez’s shoulders, you can see how while telling this part of the story stress is taken off of him. It is interesting to see that during the entire narrative Mr. Rodriguez seems unappreciative and ungrateful for the life his parents had given him. He is obviously resentful to the idea that his parents didn’t appreciate or value the idea of education, or at the very least learning the primary language of a country they moved to. Nothing in the story states that they were ignorant parents and didn’t know how to do simple math, the struggle that kept his parents from being able to give Mr. Rodriguez the attention and affection but most of all