A Scholarship Boy’s Longing

In his essay “The Achievement of Wish,” Richard Rodriguez acts as each a writer and reader in response to a book written by Richard Hoggart entitled The Makes use of of Literacy. Rodriguez discovers a parallel among his own life and the life of what Hoggart coins as a “scholarship boy.” A scholarship boy is defined as a child from a operating-class household who feels as if he “cannot afford to admire his parents…so he concentrates on the advantages that education will bestow on him.” (566). For Rodriguez, the discovery and reading of the definition prompts him to obtain the courage to realize and admit that his academic achievement is due to his early, emotional separation from both his family members and his culture. Discovering Hoggart’s book was an epic moment in Rodriguez’s life. His nostalgic knowledge is expressed when he writes, “For the very first time I realized that there have been other students like me, and so I was able to frame the meaning of my academic achievement, its consequent price- the loss.” (564). Rodriguez’s academic achievement started when the “deepest love” he had for his parents turned into “embarrassment for their lack of education.” (566). Like Hoggart’s scholarship boy, he began isolating himself from them and transitioning his respect to his teachers. He realized that his parents had no area for societal development, and if he chose to stick to in their footsteps, he would be doomed to the exact same operating-class life that they were marginalized into. Rodriguez’s embarrassment of his parents served as a catalyst to additional his education. By idolizing his teachers, he realized that he was opening the doors to achievement. The only problem with opening the doors to success is that another door closes behind it. The intimate, family life in which Rodriguez located so much pleasure was left in a self-deprecating manner. He started to associate pleasure with inferiority. For a scholarship boy, it is “clear that education is a long, unglamorous, even demeaning process…” (578). Rodriguez would go to the library and check out the maximum number of books. A lot of of these books have been recommendations from the teachers he admired so much or librarians who had gained a new fondness for him. This mirrors the words of Hoggart when he writes, “…The scholarship boy seldom discovers an author for himself and on his own.” (845). Every single time Rodriguez did discover a book on his personal and discovered it pleasurable, he disregarded it. There was no area for pleasure in his life. During grade college, Hoggart’s scholarship boys endure the constant feeling of harsh loneliness. The scholarship boy would always be the 1st to answer a teacher’s query to the annoyance of the other students. In his residence life, the scholarship boy feels as if he does not determine with his family, so conversation is usually kept to a minimum. The books that Rodriguez brought home are the epitome of Rodriguez’s imaginative, scholarship boy. They are books that disassociate himself from his family. This loneliness also proves correct in Rodriguez’s student life. There seemed to be a barrier in between Rodriguez and a normal, social life. Rather of healthily interacting with other folks, he hid behind his books. When Rodriguez was a graduate student, he traveled to London to create a dissertation on English Renaissance literature. He identified himself in a lonely neighborhood of other scholarship children whose “eyes turned away the moment [their] glances accidentally met.” (579). The realization of such a life had a profound impact on Rodriguez. Nostalgia began setting in, and he was eager to bear in mind the warmth he seasoned as a kid. Rodriguez blatantly states that he was the quintessential scholarship boy, but I think that he has considering that then shed the label. A scholarship boy is defined by Hoggart as a kid who tries to separate himself from his family members simply because of the embarrassment of association. He is the “odd man out.” (848). Nevertheless the tone used by Rodriguez in “The Achievement of Desire” is a lot more nostalgic and melancholy than embarrassed. Rodriguez openly writes about his past, even though it had taken him more than “twenty years to admit.” (564). Hoggart claims that once a scholarship boy has created the transition into a scholar, he will by no means feel a sense of belonging in his individual, private life. This is where the separation between Hoggart’s scholarship boy and Rodriguez genuinely starts. In the ending paragraphs of his essay, Rodriguez starts to recognize with his parents. He notes that he “laughed just like his mother” and “his father’s eyes had been considerably like his own.” (580). Although Rodriguez is most likely nevertheless the odd man out in his loved ones, he does feel a sense of belonging despite the strained connection. There is an fascinating partnership amongst Rodriguez and Hoggart’s texts. The structure of Rodriguez’s essay is formatted equivalent to a reading analysis worksheet. Rodriguez borrows 4 block quotes from Hoggart’s The Makes use of of Literacy and comments on them, locating a variety of parallels to his own life. An example of this can be observed when Hoggart writes, “The scholarship boy discovers a approach of apparent understanding, of acquiring of information rather than of the handling and use of facts. He learns how to receive a purely literate education, a single making use of only a little portion of the personality and difficult only a restricted region of his becoming.” (577). Like Hoggart’s scholarship boy, Rodriguez admits he was a poor student. He relied on imitation to get him via the grammar school method. Rodriguez “used his teachers’ diction, trusting their every path.” (566). He adopted what he was told to adopt rather than making decisions on his personal. Rodriguez’s way of paralleling his life to the life of Hoggart’s scholarship boy seems like a extremely systematic way of writing, which is intriguing, simply because it reflects Rodriguez’s methodical, educational upbringing. Nevertheless, how Rodriguez uses the text to his benefit is proof that he is no longer a carbon copy of Hoggart’s scholarship boy. The text is broken up into 4 sections. The initial section intertwines the words of Hoggart and Rodriguez describing Rodriguez’s claim on the term “scholarship boy.” Rodriguez blurs the lines among Hoggart and himself, which makes it possible for him to totally align himself with Hoggart’s definition of a scholarship boy. The passage from The Utilizes of Literacy within this section appears to flow a tiny too perfectly. It is seamlessly sewn collectively as if Hoggart’s words and Rodriguez’s character are 1 and the very same. The second section could have easily been ripped out of Rodriguez’s journal, because of its heavy use of individual events from the essayist’s life. The second section’s polar opposite is the third section, which seems really factual and based on Hoggart’s The Utilizes of Literacy. Many of the sentences start with “The scholarship boy…” The second and third sections show some kind of internal battle within Rodriguez, but it comes with each other in the fourth section. Alternatively of reading Hoggart’s text like a chore and adding it to a list of accomplishments like Rodriguez did with Plato’s The Republic, he comprehends and utilizes it to aid his voice. He controls the last section with great authority. Rodriguez tends to make Hoggart’s words work for him and becomes both a close reader and a creator of a literate, personal, and admirable essay. He utilizes Hoggart’s words, but he does not mimic them like he once mimicked his teachers and critics. Being able to locate his personal voice as each a reader and reader, as nicely as becoming aware and accepting of the fact that it is okay to want the previous were crucial to separating Rodriguez from Hoggart’s prescriptive scholarship boy. Rodriguez even goes as far to describe Hoggart’s scholarship boy as “more precise than fair.” (577). Although it is a seemingly an precise description, of what a young, operating-class kid might go through in life, it is not every man’s description. The scholarship boy described by Hoggart in The Uses of Literacy seemed to have an ill fate of seclusion and loneliness, but Rodriguez seems to have developed a diverse ending for himself by being capable to go back house. The final section of “The Achievement of Desire” proves that the essay is solely Rodriguez’s. He may have inserted Hoggart’s quotes into his work, however the essay is nevertheless his, simply because the clarity of his feelings and thoughts is pristine. Rodriguez, Richard. “The Achievement of Want.” Techniques of Reading. Comp. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. 561-584.