A Scholarship Boys Longing - Essay Example

A Scholarship Boy's Longing: Critical Analysis

Richard Rodriguez depicts both formal and informal settings for the implementation of the concept of an "American dream" for a boy from the working class. In his essay "The Achievement of Desire," the author provides the parallel between Hoggarts interpretation of reality that he expressed in his book "The Uses of Literacy" and the own comprehensive understanding of the struggle of a young boy to achieve the best out of the education activities. In Rodriguez's opinion, even being that early separated from his family, to prove the author's viewpoint, the boy discovers the most plausible solution that is a scholarship for him. He has been longing for the scholarship because it is a chance to improve his life and achieve the desire to succeed. Influentially, in parallel to Hoggarts worldview, education is the only way to start the new being separated from his family at a very early age. Being detached from the working-class surroundings, the boy has been trying to catch the opportunity to get a scholarship that will be beneficial for his future career and professional career. He does not like to be exploited, so he implies this chance for the best, as mentioned by Hoggart.

Rodriguez applies the chance for the self-growth by discovering the book "The Uses of Literacy" by Hoggarts, being interpreted in A Scholarship Boy's Longing. It is an epic chance for him to differentiate himself from the working class staying apart from his parents. Rodriguez understands that he will enjoy the benefits of a more successful life if he chooses the future career ladder for success. Rodriguez has been trying to idolize his teachers, realizing that his family can provide him with the worthless experience to live life in poverty. It makes the young boy praise the unique opportunity expressed by Hoggart; he reviews the essential and meaningful experience to enjoy life in full, utilizing every section of the book and applying it to his daily emotional experience in school. Rodriguez is a simple scholarship boy that catches the chance to reach success following Hoggarts recommendations. This is how his worthy national and cultural identity has been growing and developing, revealing his unique potential up to the great potential extent as he deliberates himself from the frameworks of multiculturalism and illogical comprehension of reality. Scholarship life is good for Rodriguez because he praises education above all virtues, and he acts like a boy that values ethical correspondence of every fact of life to the natural settings of the high school that is full of joy and happiness. His life is free from radicalism and stereotypes, although his family does not lack prejudices. Still, Rodriguez uses Hoggarts book to improve his attitude to scholarship and its significance in the modern world. Section by section, passage by passage, line by line, Rodriguez uses the book by Hoggart to rationalize his extensive boundaries of the worldview, opening the new horizons to the successful learning through educational settings.

However, as a scholarship boy, Rodriguez faces the alternative solutions of becoming a successful student following the guide of the book by Hoggarts. Following Rodriguez's plot, he leaves his family behind the common scenery trying to grasp the value of real life. Still, he finds himself to be caught in the cage of the literary network when reading too many books. Rodriguez is separated from his family background and common settings, so he even is not inclined to build new stable, and productive social connections. He wants to read more and more books, so he is in the distance from real life, as Rodriguez's states. Every section of the book by Hoggart is the new world for him that is full of new experiences. Rodriguez, for some time, gets to think more and more about his success and simply forgets that he was just a simple scholarship boy from his late childhood when he had some connections in the working class. Then, he is up to be sent away from the native land and search for new experiences in life abroad. Rodriguez uses Hoggarts book to realize that he needs to improve his qualification, so he makes the way to go to England to write the dissertation in the Renaissance literature. It is the new advantage for the scholarship boy that lets him stay helpful for society from which Rodriguez has been trying to make the distance.

By Rodriguez, the text is subdivided into four sections, and each section is devoted to some period of the scholarship boy's life, his family, and educational experiences. The first section is an allusion in which Rodriguez builds the parallel between his own life experience and Hoggarts definition of a scholarship boy. Essentially, Rodriguez tries to re-establish the connection between the personality of the scholarship boy and his matters of socialization that he includes for the further review of readers. The second section of the book tells about the author's life in general, based on personal events taken out for analysis from the journal by Rodriguez. The third part is based on Hoggarts book "The Uses of Literacy" that presents the flow of events devoted to the personal and professional life of the scholarship boy that takes progress in his career, displaying his clear intentions to succeed. The fourth part by Rodriguez is even more influential for the perception of life by Rodriguez that he followed based on the book by Hoggarts. However, at the same time, Rodriguez does not simply mimic the critics and evaluators of his devoted work, although he makes an advantage out of the book "The Uses of Literacy" by Hoggart. Rodriguez pays much attention to the depiction of the events from experience presented by the scholarship boy.

Both works that are "The Achievement of Desire" by Rodriguez and "The Uses of Literacy" by Hoggart are written from different perspectives, although these both books are devoted to the struggle based on misfortunate conditions and problems that a young scholarship boy has to solve based on his common experiences. However, Rodriguez's interpretation is different from Hoggarts in his overcoming humanism and optimism. Unlike Hoggarts, Rodriguez has faith that the scholarship boy should take time to achieve his desire to succeed in education while Hoggart thinks that successful benefits of the scholarship boy from the middle class are connected to serious trials and tribulations that the young boy can hardly manage to solve and overcome fruitfully in the book by Rodriguez's.

Hoggarts scholarship boy has an ill fate because he relies only on himself, being proud of his own intentional desires to win the struggle with the events. This leads him to misfortune. Rodriguez's story, in comparison to Hoggarts book, has a different ending, and the scholarship boy sets his way back home after his tense living experiences. And although both characters by Hoggarts and Rodriguez are either fictional or autobiographical, they display the multicultural value of the concept of the "American dream." Rodriguez's Mexican father has nothing more to give his son than to live amongst the representatives of the working-class without being able to enjoy the taste of events and time flow in full. In contrast, the scholarship boy depicted by Hoggart is even more ready to change his lifestyle, although his intentional benefits are far from concrete implementation of the achievement of the desire to become an educated person, following Rodriguez's viewpoint.

Both Hoggarts and Rodriguez have been trying to set their characters free from prejudices that come forward in events to prevent the scholarship student from making his dreams come true. It is good to know that every part of both literary works is full of the feeling of loneliness that has an immense impact on self-awareness and self-esteem of the scholarship student. The character by Rodriguez and Hoggarts is fictional and biographical to some extent, so the flow of events in the high school is taken from personal experiences of the authors, although to some extent, the content is to be decorated with the glimpses of time in which the student sets to live. At best, to stay out of trouble and complicated ways in their careers, the student by Rodriguez's has to develop his inner potential deliberating oneself from the poisonous impact of the forthcoming events in the surrounding atmosphere of college settings.

Hoggarts and Rodriguez are completely different authors, although they have almost the same understanding of the key concepts of modern education. The struggle for improvement and achievement of desire is typical for the student. He wants to succeed in his education and build his career. Fruitfully, he is less inclined to join his parents' experiences in leading as simple representatives of the working class. It makes the tuition the value that the young man created by Rodriguez's would like to use within his successful educational experiences optimally. Either it is abroad or at home, the young student, in Rodriguez's opinion, makes his way out of the familiar settings where reality interplays with the different scenery that makes the student full of energy to achieve his desire. His success is an elegant touch in the common atmosphere of simplicity and complexity. Although we are all inclined to reveal sympathy and empathy to the student by Rodriguez, he does not need that much attention to the facts of his experiences because he is set to win the struggle and gain the victory following Rodriguez's plot under the influence by Hoggart.