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Achievement of Desire by Richard Rodriguez

He recalls that in third grade he was "annoyed when he was unable to get help", on a simple mathematics assignment (546). His mother was: "a new girl to America [she] had been awarded a high school diploma by teachers to busy or careless to notice that she hardly spoke English" (552). Having lived most of their lives with little education Rodriguez's parents encouraged him to work hard at school. They knew first hand how hard it was to get by with little schooling. Rodriguez also witnessed the difficulties of his parents due to this lack of education; he describes most of their jobs as "dead-end work" (562). Coming from that type of low-income environment with difficult day-to-day living conditions and then entering a world of stability at school it is easy to see why Rodriguez or any scholarship boy would desire to reside in that type of stable educated environment.
             The problem with the scholarship boy is that in attempting to advance himself and separate himself from his home environment he looses all sense of self. Rodriguez lost the connection he had with his family after going away to school he recalls how at Christmas break he and his parents were, "lacking the same words to develop our sentences and to shape our interests, what was there to say?" and that " one was almost grateful for the family crisis that there was much to discuss" (554). In becoming the scholarship boy Rodriguez had lost all connection with his family. He also did not take advantage of any of the more worldly advice that his parents had to offer, "stupidly I took for granted their enormous amount of native intelligence" (551). Parents have great amounts of wisdom and values that they can pass on to their children besides the facts and figures that children are taught in school. Parents have years more experience at life then their children, and can help children avoid the same mistakes they did.


Essays Related to Achievement of Desire by Richard Rodriguez

1. rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez no longer a "Scholarship Boy"? Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literacy, provides his definition of the "scholarship boy"; Richard Rodriguez experiences what it is like to be a sholarship boy and shares his life story in his essay "The Achievement of Desire". ... Rodriguez, in writing "The Achievement of Desire," doesn't just repeat what Hoggart states in his essay; he uses it and responds back to what he has read in the essay. ... Works Cited Rodriguez, Richard. "The Achievement of Desire." ...

  • Word Count: 1044
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

2. The Achievement of Desire by Richard Rodriquez

In his essay, "The Achievement of Desire,"" Richard Rodriguez states that he was know as the "scholarship boy" throughout his entire educational career. ... Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire" switches back and forth, between his biography and the definition of "scholarship boy," based on Hoggart's definition. ... When Rodriguez is in London, he reads Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy, and is able to see himself in the essay. ... Although Rodriguez thought of himself as both a good student and a smart person while he was going through school, he never knew that he was n...

  • Word Count: 1364
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

3. Was Rodriguez Really a Scholarship Boy?

That is exactly how Richard Rodriguez's life was like. In his essay, "The Achievement of Desire," Rodriguez describes this life with a little help from Richard Hoggart's "Uses of Literacy" which also describes the kind of life a boy like Rodriguez, a "scholarship boy" would lead. ... The truth is, Rodriguez doesn't even try. ... The reader can only look upon Rodriguez as a selfish, unappreciative person. ... Rodriguez labeled himself as a "scholarship boy" to mask his own faults. ...

  • Word Count: 817
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

4. An Academic Success

An Academic Success Richard Rodriguez demonstrates in his essay "The Achievement of Desire", how he himself is "the scholarship boy". He believes that he is the scholar that Richard Hoggart refers to in his book "The Uses of Literacy." ... (Rodriguez, p. 656) To Rodriguez he saw his teachers as role models and admired them for their intelligence. ... (Rodriguez's teachers, p. 658) Rodriguez knew that one of his parents (his mother) was proud of him, while the other (his father) could careless about his achievements. ... Rodriguez at times felt superior to everyone else. ...

  • Word Count: 647
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Richard Rodriguez and Adrienne

Richard Rodriguez and Adrienne Rich were both rebels in a certain sense. ... Rodriguez said in The Achievement Desire "Shyly I"d smile, never betraying my sense of the irony: I was not proud of mother and father. ... I read books when I was a kid like Goosebumps and so forth but I never read all the time like Richard Rodriguez. ... I was never hiding and reading like Richard Rodriguez use to be. ... I can barely even relate to Richard Rodriguez because he is a democratic gay Catholic and has mostly different views then me. ...

  • Word Count: 607
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

6. The Importance of Education

In the essay, 'Achievement of Desire', Richard Rodriguez describes the life of a scholarship boy and how it is very hard to balance an academic life and living the life of being in a working class family. Rodriguez describes himself as a scholarship boy, term from Richard Hoggart, which means he excels through his intellect, always successful and always unconfident (599). ... Rodriguez had became a student with the influences from Richard Hoggart, he experienced his classroom surroundings, and he moved himself away from the past. ... The influence of Richard Hoggart's 'T...

  • Word Count: 620
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

7. The Desire to Achieve

In the essay "The Achievement of Desire" Richard Rodriguez reminisces about his experiences as a scholarship boy. ... Richard Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire" is a story within a story. ... One could very well say that Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire" is a "book about books". ... "The Achievement of Desire" could easily be regarded as bildungsroman. ... Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire" is not a novel, but it has all the characteristics of a Bildungsroman. ...

  • Word Count: 2210
  • Approx Pages: 9
  • Grade Level: High School

8. Hoggart

Richard Rodriguez utilized Richard Hoggart's essay "The Scholarship Boy" in order to describe the kind of student that he was. ... Rodriguez exhibited the scholarship boy very strongly when he was student and now when his is writing his essay, "The Achievement of Desire" he does not seem to hold the same standards of the scholarship boy that he once did. ... At the end of the Achievement of Desire he realized that what he believed as a student might not have been the best thing. He understood the way he once was and was not too fond of it; therefore he expressed his own ideas on it and wr...

  • Word Count: 764
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Never Again

Enlightened by Richard Hoggart's essay, The Uses of Literacy, Richard Rodriguez shares his own views on the "scholarship boy" in his essay, The Achievement of Desire. ... To strengthen his essay, Rodriguez turns to Hoggart's essay to borrow ideas and passages. ... Rodriguez openly admits that "I found, in [Hoggart's] description of the scholarship boy... "(569) Now that their relationship is clear, it is not hard to see why there is so much of Hoggart in The Achievement of Desire. ... There is a reason why Rodriguez chooses to refer to Hoggart so casually in his essay. ...

  • Word Count: 362
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

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