Our Common Experience
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- Date Submitted: 11/02/2008 02:56 PM
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Our Common Experience
In the short essay “Achievement of Desire” Richard Rodriquez says several times that the story he tells is a story of our common experience. Scholarship boys seem so smart and successful but it’s quite the contrary. Growing up, leaving home, becoming educated, and entering the world. This essay can give you away to look at your own life and not just the author’s.
At the end of the essay, when Rodriquez says that it would take many more years in school until he learned to not be afraid to desire his past life. He achieved what he had wanted for so long, the end of education. As I read the essay what I think it is the “end of education” is that not only is he finally done with college. But he also feels like he cannot read any more, or soak up any more knowledge. His goal was something that his mother made for him. “Get all the education you can; with an education you can do anything.” (p.552) the goal has to do with the “miseducation” that he received because he wanted so badly to just have as much education that he could get, that he didn’t actually think about what he was reading or studying he just did it to have the most work done. The goal also has to do with “desiring the past” because although he loved the positive attention and praise from his teachers he felt distant from his family. He hoped to have long conversations with his parents like he used to, but the language barrier set them apart.
My definition of desire is close to what the author is saying in his essay; you always want what you can’t have. While he was a child and didn’t speak English he was happy with his life and his family but wanted to learn to speak English and get an education. When he started going to school, learning English and getting an education he started becoming more distant from his family. Rodriquez spoke less Spanish at home and wished that his parents spoke more English. He always seemed to want something. After he read books he would have the desire for them to be...
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