The Desire to Achieve in Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire"

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The Desire to Achieve in Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire”


“To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.” � Anatole France


According to Malcolm Forbes “Educations purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” In his book “Hunger of Memory”, Rodriguez tells the story of his education, an education with its ups and downs. He says “education is not an inevitable or natural step in growing up”. Rodriguez may have been a successful student, but, as he realized, his academic success contributed to his alienation from his parents and from his former world. He left the barrio for the British Museum. But, as he argues, the separation from one’s parents is a necessary step for everyone’s development and education of life. In order for one to experience and participate in public life, one must make this difficult decision of “abandoning” his parents and “the old ways”.


In the essay “The Achievement of Desire” Richard Rodriguez reminisces about his experiences as a scholarship boy. It is through his reminiscing that Rodriguez realizes his academic success came at a price “For the first time I realized that there were other students like me, and so I was able to frame the meaning of my academic success, its consequent price � the loss”.


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Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire” is a story within a story. The author uses a frame, a literary device to remind him of himself. Rodriguez sees in the fourteen-year-old-girl, the only person who is paying attention to what he says, the only person who grasps on his every word, who’s eyes shine with enthusiasm and ambition, the boy who once did the same things to his teachers. He remembers his own background from the very beginning. Having grown up with parents who remained with the traditions of their Hispanic culture, Richard’s ambition to learn and to be like his teachers separated him from his roots. His parents’ primary language was Spanish. Once he entered the English classroom, his became English. But the language barrier was only one of the many barriers that stood between him and his parents. Once a student, Rodriguez began to live two different lives in two very different worlds. This difference is shown mainly through the different mentalities, those of his teachers and those of his parents. This discrepancy widened the gap between the two generations. Every child’s role models are his parents. Once he stepped into that classroom, Rodriguez’s role models became his teachers. He came to idolize them. He began by imitating their accents, using their diction trusting everything they said. This enthusiasm continued at home, in front of his parents. He corrected their every mistake by saying what his teacher told him “My teacher told us…” He told his mother that he wanted to become a teacher. In fact, as Rodriguez himself admits, it was not teaching that attracted him. He did not want to be a teacher; he wanted to be just like his teachers. He took this desire to the extreme by even wanting to assume a teacher’s persona. Should someone ask them if his parents were proud of their boy, they would surely answer positively. But if someone were to ask Rodriguez if he was proud of his parents he would admit “I was not proud of my mother and father.” In his time and where he lived, the fact that he denies his parents is a serious offence. This denial of his parents came out of their not resemblance to his teachers. They just were not like his teachers. He spent more time with them than he spent with his parents. He spoke to his classmates more than he spoke to his family.


As a student, Rodriguez lived two different lives in two distinct worlds. At home he is taught to trust his instinct. Then, in the classroom, teachers emphasize the role of “first think than act”. At school he can receive answers to questions that could not even be asked at home. He can think about ideas, “big ideas”, ideas that his parents did not even consider at home. At home he finds a way of life opposed to the one to which he is used in the classroom. In the beginning, there exists a balance between the school and home. The student does not want to alter that balance. He wants to continue his studies, but he still wants to be a part of his family. Once he becomes eager for success, the balance is lost. He devotes himself to studying, ignoring his family life. He finds more pleasure in reading his books than in spending time with his parents. The conversation between him and his mother, once a “flood of intimate sounds”, is now a yes or no based conversation. Between him and his parents there no longer exists a conversation, but a deep silence. As Rodriguez himself admits, “he takes his first step toward academic success, away from his family.” His departure to college made the gap between him and his family become physically visible. Even so, his family is the one who supported his every move. His mother is the one that arouse his desire for education. “Get all the education you can; with an education you can do anything.” Rodriguez adds “With a good education she could have done anything.” At every graduation they were present to support him. When he received an award at grammar school his mother told him that he had shown “the gringos”, meaning the Americans (he was better than the ones who did not have to face every obstacle that he overcame). His brother and sisters also contributed to his desire to acquire as much knowledge as he possibly could. They brought home awards and trophies that he “came to want”.


One could very well say that Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire” is a “book about books”. When he comes home from school, the student wants to take the school home with him. Thus, he brings home books in order to achieve the sensation of the classroom, “mental calm”. Everywhere you see him, he reads a book. His parents wondered “What do you see in your books?” This question becomes a leitmotif for the essay. Books constituted the primary source for knowledge. He hoped that books would bring him the academic success he longed for. “Books were going to make me educated.” Opposite to his mother and father who read only by necessity and as less and as quickly as possible, the student would read whenever he had the opportunity. His father found him reading in the closet. His mother found him reading when he was supposed to be asleep or playing outside. What did he see in his books? Books were for him not only a means to acquire knowledge, but also a way to escape from the life back home. One could say that books helped to enlarge the gap between him and his family. He wants to forget his roots. Rodriguez himself confesses “I come from another part of the world. I come from South of the border. My parents are Mexican immigrants and this is who I am this man who has an Indian face and a Spanish surname and an Anglo first name, Richard.” He also says “I didnt decide, when I was child walking down the streets, that I was going to become an American. I didnt decide, Well today Im going to become 40 percent Mexican and 60 percent Gringo. It doesnt work that way.” Rodriguez is going through a crisis of identity and he is trying to discover himself in books. He also gives his own definition of a book. “An important book” should not be enjoyable to read. It should have over a hundred pages in length; anything under could not be a book. He asks this rhetorical question “Could anything shorter be a book?” A book of real importance should be recommended by an important person. The best example here is the article he found in a newspaper (“hundred most important books of Western Civilization”) where the professor told the reporter that those books were the very bases of his education. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, however, in one of his essays entitled “Great Books Enemies of Wisdom”, argued that this study of great books “can prove to be ambiguous, even intellectually dangerous.” Yet, Rodriguez read Plato’s Republic at an age when a usual student would most probably read Lewis’s “Alice Adventures in Wonderland”. Rodriguez himself admits that he did not understand too much from his reading, but, when he finished it, he crossed the name of the book off his list.


“The Achievement of Desire” could easily be regarded as bildungsroman. The Websters College Dictionary definition of Bildungsroman is a novel dealing with the education and development of its protagonist. The Bildungsroman as a genre has its roots in Germany. The word itself is German, with Bildung having a variety of connotations, from “portrait” and “picture” to “shaping” and “formation”, all of which give the sense of development or creation. Roman simply means “novel”.


Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire” is not a novel, but it has all the characteristics of a Bildungsroman. It concerns itself with the development of a youthful protagonist as he matures. The process of maturity is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonists needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order. The reader is told about the extraordinary educational experience he endures. Rodriguez tackles a psychological battle between education and family. He relates what he must undergo to that of a “scholarship boy”. “Scholarship boy” is not a term which Rodriguez created but instead a term created by Richard Hoggart. The scholarship boy is a working-class child, torn between the order of the classroom and the chaos of his home. The term “scholarship boy” consists of a hybrid student who must be fully capable of learning in the classroom as well as at home. Both of these environments present the student with obstacles he must surmount. Rodriguez gives a definition for the “scholarship boy”. First, he is a good student, but a troubled son. Then, the good student becomes a bad student. He is “a collector of thoughts” with none of his own. He knows what the teacher feels about a certain subject and he adopts that position. He is not capable of developing his own opinions. He read everything the teachers told him to read. He read and then waited for the teachers to tell him which parts he enjoyed most. Thus, the former good student becomes a bad student. The scholarship boy must choose between his culture and the culture of the academics. Rodriguez himself must choose between the prescribed experience of his Mexican heritage and the academic prescribed experience � his teachers’ experience; he is pulled in two opposite directions. Rodriguez makes his choice and “takes his first step toward academic success, away from his family”. For Rodriguez the Mexican American culture, embodied by his parents, is one that leads to a dead end life and disappointment. If he subscribes to the cultural prescription of his heritage he will end up like his parents. Unable to submit to a life of mediocrity, Rodriguez chooses to follow the path of the academic, even if that meant to abandon his family. But, if he had had a choice, he would have taken the same path. The advantages of education outweigh the disadvantages.


Part of the development of the child is the desire to leave home and become “his own man”. Initially, he tries to forget where he came from. After tackling life and after being able to do what he always desired to do, he tries to recover his family values. “Then nostalgia began.” “Nostalgia” is used as a motif in “The Achievement of Desire”. He wanted to be less alone. He spent those three summer months with his family trying to recover what he lost in his quest for knowledge. Every positive has a negative. The essay achieves the form of a circle. Initially, there was only him and his family. Then education and school appeared in his path. He gave up his family in order to follow the path of education. In the end, he returned to his family and his roots. The circle was complete.


Rodriguez constructed “The Achievement of Desire” like a confession or a rhetorical argument. Also, the essay could take the form of a memoir or a spiritual journey. Although it is very much Rodriguez’s story, “The Achievement of Desire” is also a story of our common experience. It is the story of a lifetime. It emphasizes the main steps each of us takes during life growing up, leaving home, becoming educated, entering the world and ultimately returning to your roots.


“The Achievement of Desire” is written in the third person, which shows a generalization. His story could be our story.


Victor Hugo said “There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.” This is one of the things that Rodriguez teaches us in his story. Even though he had Mexican parents and came out of the barrio, even though he was a homosexual, which needed a lot of courage in his time, he still managed to dream and to overcome all the barriers. Local boy made good!


The main question that arouses is “How much of Richard Rodriguez’s story is also our story”?





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