An Analysis of Writing Techniques in the Achievement of Desire Essay

This essay is elegantly written with well-chosen words. Besides that, Richard Rodriguez’s adept skills in depicting the author’s complicated yet conflicting mental activities through various literary devices is also the shinning point of this piece of work. In the essay, the author mainly used several techniques such as flashbacks, comparisons and contrasts, definition, quotation, and satire to enhance the readability and entertainment of its content, which cater to most readers’ tastes and could lead them to further and in-depth thinking and reflection. Before analyzing the Rodriguez’s skills to shape and present his idea, a briefing on the essay is necessary. Rodriguez, the author, devoted most of his time to gaining knowledge. He saw schooling as the best way to get rid of his embarrassed status as an immigrant Mexican and to escape from being a poor educated person as his parents. However, after reading hundreds and thousands of classics, he found himself becoming a â€Å"scholarship boy†, otherwise pedant or book worm, overweighed with knowledge but do not have his own views on things. In other word, the whole learning process of him is mimicking and memorizing other’s words. He did not realize this until he wrote a dissertation on Renaissance Literature. He became bored of ceaseless learning and grew nostalgic and missed the family intimacy and consolations. But what irony is that in his efforts to return his family life, he found that it was education that enabled him aware of his status quo and gave him another chance to cherish the forthcoming life. Now, after gaining a rough idea of the essay, we could turn to his first writing technique-flashback. Most stories began with such a written pattern, which could leave the readers in suspense and give them a lingering aftertaste. This is also true of Rodriguez’s work. In the opening of the essay, the author appeared as the guest speaker to give a lecture on the mystery of the sounds of words to the ghetto students. No one was really interested in his speech except a girl whose eagerness to learn and ways of taking note reminded the author of his school days. In order to propel the readers to move on, he uses such a sentence â€Å"It is myself (as a boy) I see as she faces me now (a man in my thirties)†. How could an adult see his youth in a girl’s eyes? A question like that will occur to most readers’ mind, and as a result they would read on with the intention to unravel it. This sentence also plays play the role of linking the preceding and the following passage, because in the second paragraph the author began with words like â€Å"the boy†. The following paragraph all dwelled on in a sequential narration matter. Apart from leading the reader to run along the plots, the main intention Rodriguez employs flashback is to introduce the main question, which is also the clue running through the whole essay, â€Å"How did I manage my success? †. By putting forward the question, the whole work has a pivot on which the reader could gain a better understanding of Rodriguez’s strange behaviors and complicated emotions in the rest content. The sharp and stark comparisons and contrasts between classroom and home, family life and school life, teachers and parents are also prevailing in Rodriguez’s writing. In Rodriguez’s eyes, home is a place one could feel the intense pleasure of intimacy and consolations while classroom is a place relatively reclusive and lonely, but the latter is more favorable when one is ready to embark on a road to knowledge. School life is dull and attentive while family life (concerning the author’s situation, the working class may be more pertinent) is an adult life full of trivial and petty things related to mundane life, such as Rodriguez’s description of his mother’s ironing and father’s habitual self-talks. Teachers, as Rodriguez sees it, they are the idols who could guide him in the process of searching for more knowledge. We can see this in his narration that even as a fourth grade students, he asked his teacher for booklists and librarians even reserve books for him. Parents, however, are poor educated who speak English with Mexican accent, making Rodriguez rather shameful in the grammar school graduation ceremony when the nun condescended to speak to them. These three comparisons and contrasts could be concluded as the conflicts between study and family. The author, with the eagerness to read more and the ambition to become elite, he chose the former. All these may render a strong sense of sympathy in the readers. They may be sorry and even curse the education which brings the author into such a tragic situation. Some readers, who have an intense interest in unrelenting pursuit of knowledge, might awaken to the reality that they are also leading a tragic life just like the author. Consequently, the illuminations people obtained from this essay may even change their way of life. Definition could also be spotted in this essay. The key term, scholarship boy coined by the author, has multiple levels of meanings. Definitions like â€Å"the scholarship boy must move between environments, his home and the classroom, which are at cultural extremes, opposed†, â€Å". . . The scholarship boy does not straddle, cannot reconcile, the two great opposing cultures of his life. †, â€Å"the scholarship boy makes only too apparent his profound lack of self-confidence. †, â€Å"The scholarship boy is a very bad student. He is the great mimic; a collector of thoughts, not a thinker. † and so on so forth. Any reader, who follows closely with the author’s flow of thoughts, could readily identify the scholarship boy he referred in distain and shame is himself. We could also draw such a conclusion from the last paragraph â€Å"I was a scholarship boy at the time†¦Ã¢â‚¬  So why does Rodriguez define it so frequently with different interpretations? What’s his purpose? In my view, Rodriguez in doing so is just want to highlight his regrets of distancing himself from family life and his shame of being a machine learning by mimicking and memorizing without originality. Like a person who committed some bad deeds, he would keep bubbling and muttering to show his regrets and sorrows. This would also give a sharp impression on the readers, making them reflect on the purpose of education and their own ways of learning. Quotations are scattered in this essay, most of them are from The Use of Literary Written by Richard Hoggart. For instance, in order to explain a scholarship boy’s nostalgic feeling at the end of his education he cited a paragraph from Richard Hoggart’ book, â€Å"The nostalgia is the stronger and the more ambiguous because he is really â€Å"in 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. . . .† The contradicting moods are vividly presented in these words, which also makes the readers easier to grasp Rodriguez’s painful and conflicting emotions. He wants to go back to the family life and enjoys the intimacy but his desire for knowledge prevented him from doing that, which resembles a girl who is longing for a piece of candy but her decayed tooth deprives this enjoyment. So the author must be very helpless and painful during this process. Satire is also another main technique the author used to better present his idea. The repeat definition of scholarship boy is a satire, people’s constant inquiry of the secret of his success and his unexpected answer (I couldn’t forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student. ). The biggest satire of this work is that the author found that the education made him distant himself from his parents while it again offered him chance to care for them. What an irony it is! These ironies add an entertaining yet painful effect to the essay and the readers, driving them to think deep. To sum up, all these writing technique do bring the readers forward and hold their attention, but the unique experience of the author is the trump card of this essay’s success.