In his essay “The Achievement of Desire,” Richard Rodriguez acts as both a writer and a reader in response to a book written by Richard Hoggart titled The Uses of Literacy. Rodriguez discovers a parallel between his life and the life of what Hoggart calls a "scholarship man." A scholarship boy is defined as a child from a working-class family who feels he “cannot afford to look up to his parents…so focuses on the benefits that education will give him”. For Rodriguez, discovering and reading the definition pushes him to find the courage to realize and admit that his academic success is due to his early emotional separation from both his family and his culture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Discovering Hoggart's book was an epic moment in Rodriguez's life. His nostalgic experience is expressed when he writes: "For the first time I realized that there were other students like me, and so I was able to frame the meaning of my academic success, its consequent price: loss." Rodriguez's academic success began when the "deepest love" he felt for his parents turned into "embarrassment at their lack of education." Like the boy with the Hoggart scholarship, he began to isolate himself from them and transfer his respect to his teachers. He realized that his parents had no room for social growth, and if he chose to follow in their footsteps, he would be condemned to the same working-class life in which they had been marginalized. Rodriguez's embarrassment about his parents served as a catalyst to further his education. By idolizing his teachers, he realized that he was opening doors to success. The only problem in opening the doors to success The intimate and family life in which Rodriguez found so much pleasure was left in a self-deprecating way. He began to associate pleasure with inferiority. For a boy on a scholarship, it is “clear that education is a long, unglamorous, even humiliating process…”. Rodriguez would go to the library and borrow the maximum number of books. Many of these books were recommendations from teachers he admired so much or librarians who had acquired a new passion for him. This mirrors the words of Hoggart when he writes: “…The boy on a scholarship rarely discovers an author for himself and alone.” Whenever Rodriguez discovered a book on his own and found it enjoyable, he ignored it. There was no room for pleasure in his life. Throughout primary school, Hoggart Scholarship kids endure the constant feeling of harsh loneliness. The scholarship boy was always the first to answer the teacher's question, to the irritation of the other students. In his home life, the scholarship boy feels like he doesn't identify with his family, so conversation is always kept to a minimum. The books Rodriguez brought home are the epitome of Rodriguez's imaginative, scholarship boy. They are books that dissociate themselves from his family. This loneliness also proves true in Rodriguez's student life. There seemed to be a barrier between Rodriguez and a normal social life. Instead of interacting healthily with other people, he hid behind his books. When Rodriguez was a graduate student, he went to London to write a thesis on English Renaissance literature. He found himself in a lonely community of other scholarship kids whose “eyes turned away the moment [their] gazes accidentally met.” The fulfillment of a lifesimilar had a profound effect on Rodriguez. Nostalgia began to kick in, and he was eager to remember the warmth he had experienced as a child. Rodríguez brazenly claims to have been the ultimate scholarship kid, but I believe he has since abandoned the label. A scholarship boy is defined by Hoggart as a child who seeks to separate from his family due to embarrassment of association. He is "the strange man". However, the tone used by Rodriguez in “Wish Fulfillment” is more nostalgic and melancholy than embarrassed. Rodriguez writes openly about his past, even though it took him more than “twenty years to admit it.” Hoggart argues that once a young man on a scholarship has made the transition to scholar, he will never feel a sense of belonging in his personal and private life. This is where the separation between Hoggart's scholarship boy and Rodriguez truly begins. In the final paragraphs of his essay, Rodriguez begins to identify with his parents. She notes that she "laughed just like her mother" and "her father's eyes were very much like hers." Although Rodriguez is most likely still the odd man out in his family, he feels a sense of belonging despite the strained relationship. Intriguing Connection Between Rodriguez and Hoggart's Texts The structure of Rodriguez's essay is formatted similarly to a reading analysis worksheet. Rodriguez borrows four quotes from Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy and comments on them, finding various parallels with his own life. An example of this can be seen when Hoggart writes: “The boy with a scholarship discovers a technique of apparent learning, of acquiring facts rather than of managing and using facts. He learns to receive a purely literate education, using only a small part of the personality and challenging only a limited area of ​​his being.” Like the boy with the Hoggart scholarship, Rodriguez admits that he was a bad student. He relied on imitation to get through the elementary school system. Rodriguez “used his teachers' diction, trusting their every indication.” He adopted what he was told to adopt rather than making decisions on his own. Rodriguez's way of comparing his life to that of the Hoggart Scholar seems like a very systematic way of writing, which is interesting, because it reflects Rodriguez's methodical and educational upbringing. However, the way Rodriguez uses the text to his advantage is proof that he is no longer a carbon copy of Hoggart's scholarship boy. The text is divided into four sections. The first section interweaves words from Hoggart and Rodriguez describing Rodriguez's statement on the term "fellowshipper." Rodriguez blurs the lines between himself and Hoggart, which allows him to align himself completely with Hoggart's definition of a scholarship boy. The transition from The Uses of Literacy within this section seems to flow a little too perfectly. It is seamlessly stitched together as if Hoggart's words and Rodriguez's personality were one and the same. The second section could have easily been ripped from Rodriguez's diary, due to its heavy use of personal events from the essayist's life. The exact opposite of the second section is the third section, which seems very concrete and based on Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy. Many of the sentences begin with "The scholarship guy...". The second and third sections show a sort of internal battle within Rodriguez, but they come together in the fourth section. Instead of reading Hoggart's text as a chore and adding it to a hit list as Rodriguez did with Plato's Republic, he understands it and uses it to, 2005. 561-584.