The Achievement Of Desire Essay, Research Paper

The Achievement of Desire

Richard Rodriguez s’ The Achievement of Desire is a story self-identity and culture. Having grown up with parents who remained with the traditions of their Hispanic culture, Richards s ambition to learn, and to be like his teachers, separated him from his roots. Almost immediately at a young age Richard realizes learning requires quiet time and space that he did not have much of at home. As his desire increased to read and write so did his isolation from his parents. As much as he loved them he also bared a load of guilt from being embarrassed by their thick accents and behavior.

The boy in the story spent all his free time reading and studying. He spent his time trying to figure out what his teachers wanted from him. These books have made me all that I am. That was the kind of remark I could not ignore (Rodriguez 634). This is a good example of that. This is also an example of the banking concept of education that Paulo Freire wrote about. He had a goal to learn the material, almost memorize it. Most books, of course, I barely understood (Rodriguez 634). This is definitely not literate. The basic meaning of to be literate is being able to read, but literacy is a lot more. It is understanding what you read, and looking past the words on the page to understand what the message is that the author is sending to you. Everyone who reads has a different view of what the author meant, and the author might be all together different. It doesn t mean that the reader is wrong, but that they are questioning the text this is literacy.

This student had a goal to be enlighten and at some point along the road to enlightenment, the talented student understood that the adult world that has been modeled for him by his parents is not the one in which he will live. He regretted that he was leaving behind the family life that he cherished; yet he found himself more and more frequently ashamed of his unlearned parents. Not to mention that he felt as if he had lost his past.

He longs for the membership he lost, he pines for some

nameless Eden where he never was. The nostalgia is

the stronger and the more ambiguous because he is really

in the quest of his own absconded self yet scared to find

it. He both wants to go back and yet thinks he has gone

beyond his class, feels himself weighted with knowledge

of his own and their situation, which hereafter forbids

him the simpler pleasures of his father and mother (Hoggart 637)

In this passage by Hoggart, that was used by Rodriguez, shows that this student knew he was distancing himself from his parents, yet he still wanted his childhood back. After spending hours of time in his room reading literature that he never had time for friends or even his family. He has separated himself from the world for so long that he has lost who he is. One day he is a young kid, and he moves on in life isolated from everyone and he can t communicate with kids his own age, let alone his undereducated parents, and now he realizes that he has missed a lot of his life and is scared that he can t experience any of his adolescent years, because he is further ahead of his friends.

He did what the teachers wanted and he didn t make his learning experience a part of himself, he made his goal to learn by reading and not understanding instead of learning through experiences he had throughout life. He thinks he is beyond his peers, but if he doesn t understand what he is reading, all he has accomplished is being able to read, like everyone else his age.