Richard Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire"

Today, we had a couple of really great discussions about this essay. Mostly we focused on "content" oriented comments rather than form, but this is a great essay for students to relate personally to. My hope is that the essay resonated in a way that Biss may not have as all of you are currently involved in separating from your parents, whether or not they are like Rodriguez's parents.

In the first section, I forced all of you to talk for 15 minutes (you talked for 25) without me saying a word. I was impressed by the class's ability to mediate and facilitate their own discussion! I want to do more of this because I believe in fostering conversation among students and not just addressing me as the teacher-as-judge "well yes, that is very interesting, but. . ."

I hope that writing for a bit at the beginning of class helps you all have something to say--these essays are hard to hold in one's head. Furthermore, you may be able to just transfer some of that stuff to your blog!

We talked about several things:

• The difference between college and high school with regard to parents expectation
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• The idea that Rodriguez was "bookish" but not necessarily a good reader
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• How we tend to get "lost" in reading and questioning whether the kids of today have a harder time reading because of the various distractions. 
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• Personal connections with trying to balance your family's culture/language and the "educated" language one learns in college. How one's family can seem "ignorant" but not "stupid." This comes with a sense of guilt.
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• I think it was Shirley who said something about being the "translator" for one's family and how frustrating that can be. "Why don't you just learn English?"
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• Katie discussed how she could not imagine a childhood without reading with her parents. We found that not everyone had that luxury. 

In the other class, because of the set-up, we were unable to do the same activity, which is unfortunate. Katie, Micole, and Brianna discussed how Rodriguez's experience reminded them a lot of Matilda (a great movie and a good connection!)


Elina discussed how she understands where Rodriguez is coming from because english is her 3rd language (which astounds me given Elina's mastery of spoken English!).


Zach talked about how some people have the opposite experience of Rodriguez--where many kids who have "genius" parents (a word that Micole used to describe her parents) cannot or do not want to live up to that (or feel like they HAVE to). This can also present problems. This reminds me of Laura's point (in the other class) that since her dad is an engineer, she can do complex physics problems with him in a way that may isolate other members of her family.


Arti asked a question about Rodriguez's capitalization of Romantics. I explained that the Romantics are a literary/artistic movement. Poets include Shelly, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe (German), Edgar Allen Poe, etc. There are also Romantic painters. Romantics tended to praise the working-class and, as Rodriguez argues, because it is "and adult way of life."


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For my blog today, I want to talk about some of the rhetorical techniques Rodriguez uses to write about his experience.


1.) Repetition


Rodriguez repeats several phrases throughout the text, the most significant one being "Your parents must be proud." Why does he repeat this phrase? I see two reasons: First, he hears it over and over again so he mirrors that fact in his prose. Second, he wants to show how that phrase constantly has changed meaning with the context in which it was spoken. At first, he has an answer, but then he is not so sure.


2.) Incorporating other people's language into his prose


Beginning with the above phrase, we notice that Rodriguez quotes people so as to make his essay more like a narrative. Sometimes these are explicit, such as "Hey Four Eyes!" and when he tells his father "I'll try to figure it out some more by myself" (516).


But other times, he puts the discourse in parantheses. examples: ("Your parents must be proud. . ."), his father's words, for instance when Rodriguez is explaining his father's past: "He had great expectations then of becoming an engineer. ("Work for my hands and my head")" (522). The reader can assume that this is how is father speaks and explains his choices. Another example might be helpful here: "Later he became a dental technician. ("Simple")" (522).

We get the sense that his father is a man of few words. This recalls for me Rodriguez's interest in the "complex sentences" of his teacher rather than the "Sentences of astonishing simplicity" that seemed lifeless (525). Perhaps his father's discourse is like the lifeless, simple sentences? Contrast his mother and father's discourse with the big, bloc quotes from Hoggart's text, filled with complex sentences. What is the effect of Rodriguez incorporating quoted lines from people he describes? Why does it have this effect?


 3.) Varying sentence length (sometimes breaking conventions): "I kept so much, so often, to myself. Sad. Enthusiastic. Troubled by the excitement of coming upon new ideas [. . .] Alone for hours. Enthralled. Nervous." (520).

Why these one word sentences? Is Rodriguez here struggling to describe his emotions?


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What is left out?

What is left out is more traces of his Hispanic origins! We have two spanish words cited, both from his mother and father, in the entire essay.

gringos (520) (although, for some reason, this word is not in quotation marks. Rather, the word in quotation marks is "shown." Why is that? I'm not sure) Denotes foreignness--particularly people from the United States.

iPochos! (519)

What is a Pocho? (and why the I? is this a grammatical construction particular to Spanish?)  How does this word, this one Spanish word, relate to the whole essay? Why is it that he only uses these two Spanish words?

I looked it up--will you?