Rhetorical Strategies

• Fragments: “A factory job. Then a cannery job. Then a job at a ware house…Nowhere a union” (Rodriguez 129).
• Metaphor: “Tongues explored the edges of words, especially the fat vowels. And we happily sounded that military drum roll, the twirling roar of the Spanish r” (Rodriguez 17).
• Repetition: “What solely concerned them was that affirmative action limited their chances, their plans” (Rodriguez 178).
The fragments are from a section where the author describes his father’s hard life and how his dreams were shattered. The fragments create a tone of sadness and desperation, one thing moving to another with no hope. Besides just commenting on the situation of his father, Rodriguez also shows the disparity of the illegal immigrant workers using fragments to further the tone of anguish. The purpose of the metaphor is to show how the Spanish language heightens the intimacy and warmth for Richard Rodriguez. The repetition in combination with the italics on the word “their” emphasizes Rodriguez’s point that middle-class white students were complaining about affirmative action selfishly, they should also keep in mind the lower-class whites who are more severely damaged by affirmative action. Rodriguez uses many rhetorical strategies in this book, and all contribute to making his writing sophisticated, mature, and persuasive.

Character

Although she is not a major character, the grandmother is an important person in the book. She, more than either of the parents, represents the old way of living in Mexico. She represents to Richard Rodriguez the lifestyle and culture he can no longer obtain because of his assimilation into the world of los gringos. The grandmother teases Richard that he is a Pocho, because he does not speak Spanish anymore. However, she makes Richard her favorite grandson, talking to him in private in Spanish. Even though they do not share much in common anymore after Richard’s assimilation, they have a surprisingly intimate relationship. Rodriguez characterizes his grandmother with his diction, “She remained completely aloof from the public. Protected by her daughters. Protected even by me when we went to Safeway together and I acted as her translator” (Rodriguez 37). He uses the diction “aloof” and “protected” to show that the grandmother is not assimilating at all into America. The grandmother’s children assimilate more than her, and their children, like Richard, almost completely. The grandmother told Richard all about her life in Mexico, giving Richard the knowledge to understand his culture. However much Richard respects his grandmother and her way of life, he still abandons that in favor of a life of education. He writes about her with a very affectionate tone, which shows his maturity at the age of eight or nine; he takes in what his grandmother has to say, but is still very strong in his own opinions and drive to become educated.

Theme

The major theme in this book is the cost of assimilation and education for the first and second generations of immigrants. As the Rodriguez children become educated, more educated than their parents, and learn to speak better English, better than their parents, they become more and more separated from their parents because of lack of communication and a lack of similarities. As a child, Richard Rodriguez feels less intimate with his family because of his education. However, he believes that the benefits of education outweigh the drawbacks. As the children grow older and become very successful, the parents begin to feel their separation grow even wider. Even though they are proud of their children and hold most of the responsibility for their success, they feel the intimacy in the family has been lost. When their children grow up and get married to people who do not speak Spanish, they feel even more isolated. Because they never learned how to speak English with confidence, the Rodriguez parents cannot express their true thoughts and feelings in English to their children-in-law and grandchildren. At one of the Christmas gatherings Richard’s father, “asks if [Richard is] going home too. It is the only thing he has said to [him] all evening” (Rodriguez 212). Even though they are family, the Rodriguez’s are unable to share the intimacy a family should have because of the difference in education. The parents give up their hopes and dreams (the father dreamt to become an engineer) and instead have to transfer those dreams onto their children. The theme that Rodriguez presents is that education can take away from a family’s relationship, but it is necessary for the success of the next generations.

Personal Review

I thought that the autobiography, Hunger of Memory, by Richard Rodriguez, was intriguing because of the unique way he structured the biography. Rather than writing about his life in chronological order, he breaks the novel up into different essays that focus around topics such as his religion, his skin color, or his argument against affirmative action. For me, the most interesting part was the argument against affirmative action. This intrigued me because it is unsuspected from a person of ethnicity. Even as a person with liberal tendencies, I disagree with affirmative action, and I liked Rodriguez’s argument. He argues that affirmative action really only benefits those people who are minorities and who are already equal to whites in regard to education and even social class, like him. This hurts all whites, but mostly those from a lower class. Rodriguez feels guilty that even though he has the same credentials, accomplishments, and, to an extent, background as his white classmates, he has more opportunities because of his race. He argues that the money should be spent on improving poor inner city schools rather than affirmative action, thereby attacking the root of the problem. The thing I most disliked about this autobiography was that it was definitely not a page-turner. However, I did not expect it to be, and I still enjoyed the education it gave me. It gave me a new perspective on the privilege my classmates and I have to receive a very high quality education, which is what everybody should have the chance to obtain.

Symbol

In chapter 4 of Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez writes about the issue of his dark skin compared to los gringos and even other Hispanics. To him, this dark skin is ugly and is a symbol of the poor Mexican farm worker, partly because his mother scolds him to stay out of the sun; “‘You won’t be satisfied till you end up looking like los pobres who work in the fields, los braceros’”(Rodriguez 121). Because they are a comparatively more wealthy family, the Rodriguez’s try to distinguish themselves from those Hispanics who have to work in the sun all day. As a child during the 50’s and 60’s, Rodriguez saw the inequality of both the Hispanics in his neighborhood and the African Americans in the newspaper, thereby making the generalized connection that being dark makes one poor. Richard Rodriguez’s parents saw light skin as a symbol of leisure. They wanted their children to grow up as light skinned as possible, therefore, in their minds, guaranteeing success. However, as Rodriguez grows up and becomes successful while maintaining his dark complexion, he realizes that dark skin is only a symbol of poverty in context. Because he has dark skin and drives a nice car, people assume he became dark from vacationing in the Caribbean rather than toiling in the fields. Rodriguez realizes that his parents’ symbol of dark skin is out-dated, and is slowly vanishing. In this way, Rodriguez’s dark skin is a symbol of his accomplishment by overcoming the obstacles of racism.