Jingshen Huang
ENGW1101
Fall 2013
Assignment #4, Draft 1
As a scholarship boy, Rodriguez received many years of schooling and kept moving away from family as the time in education passed. This was what Rodriguez chosen before he actually realized his long for past. Once he admitted his nostalgia, he chose to physically leave academy and back home to stay with his family. But no sooner, he suspect his return and finally understand “If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.” (Rodriguez, 532). At the end of his essay, he summarized his gain from his schooling, which is ‘Ways of speaking and caring’ himself or, in other word, discover the true behind reality. His discovery process of ‘ways of speaking and caring’ include his relationship with his family and teacher, experience of reading, and class shifted as he move from elementary school through college and graduate school to his career as a teacher and a writer.
As a working-class Mexican immigrants’ son, Rodriguez inevitably sense the separation between him and his family, whom he feels deepest love, as he advanced his academic level. Through education, Rodriguez changed but his parents didn’t change as much as him. His parents saying and behavior often reminded him of the person he once was and the life. Instead of admiring his parents, he felt embarrassed at their lack of education. He deliberately
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.
Rodriguez also shows us that he has gained the “sociological imagination” by writing about his appreciation and understanding
Richard Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944 in San Francisco, California, where his primary language was Spanish. His parents were two Mexican Immigrants, who did not speak English as much as they should’ve. His father, Leopoldo Rodriguez, worked as a dental technician and his mother, Victoria Moran Rodriguez, stayed at home and was a part time typist. Richard grew up being monolingual until he was six years old, where he went to a Catholic school in Sacramento, California. Richard could only speak at least fifty words of English and that was only to help him when he had to do errands for his mother.
As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with
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
Rodriguez is ashamed. He is ashamed with the fact his espanol is no longer his main language. The author presents, “I grew up a victim to a
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”.
The father figure depicted in this story could be viewed in a few different ways. At first I thought the authors father was kind of a stuck up, rude man, who was sour about the advantages of living a normal life in American society. I felt that he had made his son feel like he could never do what he had down. If a parental figure makes you feel like that, there tends to be a reaction. It could be positive or negative. In Rodriguez’s case he took what his father said, and harnessed it into a positive learning experience. When I thought about more in depth, it became clear that Rodriguez’s father wasn’t putting his son down at all. He was simply explaining to his son how different their worlds where. He was stressing that although his son had more opportunity, and was presented with much greater potential to be excellent, that the work he did growing up was much harder, and tough than most people realize. His father was just making it known that in his working years he did not have many options as to career choices. But on the other hand I can easily see why the author felt that his father had challenged him. Much like I felt my father was challenging me. Rodriguez felt like he needed to prove that he could perform the same task that his fathers use to do to provide for their families. Working with you’re your hands, completing messy, strenuous, sometimes painful jobs was almost a part of Hispanic culture. A part of
Rodriguez's parents think they are doing the best job possible raising their three children. Being a lower class family, money was not something that was always available. His mother and father can always supply them with love and nurturing. The way they let their children know they are special and close is to talk to them in their private language. His parents could not speak good English; they could not translate their terms of endearment for the children without the saying losing its meaning. "Using Spanish, he (the father) was quickly effusive...his voice would spark, flicker, flare alive with varied sounds." Only speaking English, the father is a completely different person. Speaking Spanish is was a loud vivid man, only using English changed him into a quiet, often thought shy person. In society's eyes, speaking Spanish at home further damages their children's' chance at a bright future. "My mother grew restless, seemed troubled and anxious at the scarceness of words exchanged in the house." His mother carries a burden of frustration for what she thinks is best for her children. It is puzzling why they didn't set aside a special family time for only speaking in Spanish. Were the nuns and society so intimidating to Rodriguez's
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.
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.
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