Summary Of Achievement Of Desire By Richard Rodriguez

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.

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 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.

Richard Rodriguez had faced a lot of problems that most students in America do not have to deal with. Richard had to deal with parents that couldn’t help him in school and wanting to be successful academically. He had become embarrassed of his background and where he came from and did not want to embrace his culture.

In his article “Scholarship Boy”, Richard Rodriguez discusses his past as a scholarship boy, how that impacted his future and how he feels looking back on the situation. Rodriguez chronologically tells his story about growing up within a bilingual family and how his struggle to become a successful student alienated him from his family. His use of italics emphasizes his main point like when he says “… I couldn’t forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student” (Rodriguez 6). Along with the use of italics to emphasize his main points Rodriguez uses parentheses to express his inner thoughts, such as. when he reiterates the comments of others and how he reflects upon those questions, an

Rodriguez also shows us that he has gained the “sociological imagination” by writing about his appreciation and understanding

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

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.

In Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire,” he compares himself to author Richard Hoggart’s “scholarship boy,” the type of student anyone can become. The “scholarship boy” is “anxious and eager to learn,” but is overbearing in his ways of learning and conveying knowledge (Rodriguez 534). Born as a son of two Mexican immigrants, Rodriguez quickly detached his life at school from his life at home. Hoggart helped Rodriguez to see near the end of his education exactly how harmful this type of lifestyle would become for Rodriguez’s learning. In my own experience, and specifically in my four years of high school, I tried my best to avoid being a “scholarship boy,” because that would prove detrimental to myself in relationships, my education, and my health and wholeness.

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.

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.

In Rodriguez’s essay, The Achievement of Desire, Rodriguez illustrates the characteristics of an automaton, thus confirming Freire’s views regarding the banking concept. Despite his classification as a "scholarship boy", Rodriguez lacked his own point of view and confidence, which led him to be dominated by his teachers and his books. In the eyes of Paulo Frerie, Rodriguez would be considered a receptacle. He was filled not only with his teacher’s information, but also with knowledge obtained from his reading of "important" books. Rodriguez is a classic student of the banking system.

Our education system is perhaps one of the most complex institutions in the United States. Students are taught to be their most authentic selves but yet are told to think a certain way. In reality, students really don’t have the freedom to be their genuine identity. Our society tells us that a typical student speaks the language, excels in all areas of study, and loves to read. Children who do not fit this mold are often at a disadvantage and do not attain the same acceptance. In the essay, “Achievement of Desire” Richard Rodriguez was a first generation immigrant from Mexico. His parents spoke little English, and had no education. Automatically, his family is an outcast. Throughout Rodriguez’s schooling career he learned to fit the perfect mold of the “typical” American student. He finds himself to be in an internal struggle between social versus family isolation, authenticity and finding his place in the American society.

Growing up, people realize that around the time of reaching a mature state, education has affected their personal family life in one way or the other. With that being said, in his essay, “The Achievement of Desire”, Richard Rodriguez headed towards a path where he was unconsciously distancing himself from his family and becoming much more independent than he had expected. Rodriguez gives the reader a sentimental idea of the two contrary lives he had growing up, the life he had as a child, and the life he has as an educated man. He continued believing in his aspiration of how benefits of education can remarkably outweigh the past struggles of both his family and himself. Like Rodriguez, I also, in the past, found some form of solitude