Richard Rodriguez, Aria- Quotes

This piece was a touching piece to read.  I was able to feel the emotion behind his writing.  You can feel his sense of disappointment and lack of comfort with initially learning the English language, and understandably so. He felt as though losing his connection with the Spanish language would make him lose a sense of home in his life. School was an uncomfortable environment for him, so going home at the end of the day was a sense of relief to him. There, he felt as though he was free.

“But I couldn’t believe that the English language was mine to use. (In part, I did not want to believe it.) I continued to mumble, I resisted the teacher’s demands. (Did I somehow suspect that once I learned public language my pleasing family life would be changed?) Silent, waiting for the bell to sound, I remained dazed, diffident, afraid.”

^He thought that learning the English language would make him lose his identity. At the end of the piece, he states that, “they do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public identity.” It makes me wonder that at what point is it worth it to lose a private individuality for a public one?

“From the doorway of another room, spying the visitors, I noted that incongruity – the clash of two worlds, the faces and voices of school intruding upon the familiar setting of home.”

^He disliked the fact that the English language was going to ruin his home life – the only place he felt comfortable within his own skin and using his own voice.

“No longer so lose; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.”

^He felt as though he had a public identity, but was he lacking the feeling of an individual identity. This is important, because in the beginning of the piece, it is all about him losing his private identity to fit in with the rest of the school. It was his main struggle, and the only reason why he was so hesitant on actually applying the English language.

 Comments:

It was sad to hear his story about how he had to give up his identity to learn a new one so that he could fit in and be apart of society.  I'm not going to lie i got choked up when i read this piece because i cant even imagine how it must feel to give up such a big part of your identity and who you are just to be able to basically succeed in life.