The Achievement of Desire, by Richard Rodriguez Essay

Another way Rodriguez explores and conveys his conflicted feelings is with use of tropes. He uses rhetorical question, which is asking a question, not for the purpose of eliciting an answer but for the purpose of asserting or denying something obliquely. The most effective rhetorical questions in conveying his feelings is in the second to last paragraph. He questions things such as “How shall I present the argument between comedy and tragedy, this tension that describes my life? Shall I start with the boy’s chapter, then move toward more

Rodriguez struggles to fit in the “American Society” because he is bilingual. He feels the most safe when he speaks Spanish, hearing or speaking English sets fear in him. The first fear he encounters when hearing or speaking English that

Another effect to take into account is Richard’s relationship with his parents. As time went by, language became a real problem for him and together with this, Rodriguez developed negative feelings towards his family. English seemed odd and difficult for Richard until a few of his teachers visited his house. In order to improve Richard’s master of English

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

In Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez recalls his time growing up in Los Angeles during the 60s and 70s. Rodriguez writes of the hardships that his family had first encountered while trying to assimilate into American society and how he would often, while growing up, be criminalized by his teachers, law enforcement, other people, his peers, his community, and eventually people who cared most for him. Rodriguez recalls the times where he and some friends came together and created a family, a brotherhood of sort, in order to fulfill his need of belonging, but as other people in the community had also formed groups to consolidate power, thus marked the beginning of rivalry and the introduction of gangs. Rodriguez’s gang life had been filled with tragedies and filled with great times, but ultimately he tried to leave the life of crime and commit to an education. Rodriguez tried stepping away from the gang lifestyle by going to school and writing poetry, but ended up back in the life of crime after a serious altercation with the police. When Rodriguez went back to his gang lifestyle, he found the same gang that treated him as a brother, had shunned him away after Rodriguez had offered a solution to wither away the gang violence.

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.

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.

Rodriquez also feels a distance from the barrio children. Although they also spoke Spanish they were not part of what he considered home. He did not live in the Barrio but rather in a very white neighborhood, “only a block from the biggest, whitest houses,” of Sacramento in the fifties. Due to the location of his home he explains as “an accident of geography” that sent Rodriquez to a school of white children. It was there at school that he first heard his name pronounced in English, and this occurrence made the young child cry. The name Richard was as foreign to him as many other English words, it was the first time he truly understood the difference between home and public.

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

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.

The reader disagrees with Rodriguez’s idea that other languages besides the primary language of a society cannot be used in the classroom. Rodriguez says that “it is not possible

2. What does Rodriguez mean when he says, “[I]n a way, it didn’t matter very much that my parents could not speak English with ease…. And yet, in another way, it mattered very much” (para.15)?

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”.