Rodriguez's Public Language example essay topic

Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood by Richard Rodriguez is an essay that shows his readers a part of life that many have never experienced. Rodriguez uses this essay to show how he fights through his childhood to understand English. Speaking clear English will help him to fit in to society. He faces society while forfeiting his happy home life, to try to become a typical English-speaking student.

As a young child, Rodriguez finds comfort and safety in his noisy home full of Spanish sounds. Spanish, is his family's' intimate language that comforts Rodriguez by surrounding him in a web built by the family love and security which is conveyed using the Spanish language. 'I recognize you as someone close, like no one outside. You belong with us, in the family, Ricardo". When the nuns came to the Rodriquez's house one Saturday morning, the nuns informed the parents that it would be best if they spoke English. Torn with a new since of confusion, his home is turned upside down.

His sacred family language, now banished from the home, transforms his web into isolation from his parents. 'There was a new silence in the home". Rodriguez is resentful that it is quiet at the dinner table, or that he can't communicate with his parents about his day as clearly as before. He is heartbroken when he overhears his mother and father speaking Spanish together but suddenly stop when they see Rodriguez.

This was lets him know that he is now an outsider, no longer included in their private language. This is one of the saddest moments of his childhood. Rodriguez begins to become more involved in his classroom by his new grip on the English language. He shares fewer and fewer words with his mother and father.

His tone now transforms into guilt. As Rodriguez's public language becomes more fluent, he forgets how to speak Spanish. 'I would have been happier about my public success had I not recalled, sometimes, what it had been like earlier, when my family conveyed its intimacy through a set of conveniently private sound". He begins to break out of the cocoon as a slow or disadvantaged child and blooms into a regular kid in his white society that only uses English. He feels a great sense of betrayal of his Mexican past. His connection that held him so close to his family is destabilized.

Rodriguez's parents think they are doing the best job possible raising their three children. Being a lower class family, money was not something that was always available. His mother and father can always supply them with love and nurturing. The way they let their children know they are special and close is to talk to them in their private language. His parents could not speak good English; they could not translate their terms of endearment for the children without the saying losing its meaning. 'Using Spanish, he (the father) was quickly effusive... his voice would spark, flicker, flare alive with varied sounds".

Only speaking English, the father is a completely different person. Speaking Spanish is was a loud vivid man, only using English changed him into a quiet, often thought shy person. In society's eyes, speaking Spanish at home further damages their children's' chance at a bright future. 'My mother grew restless, seemed troubled and anxious at the scarceness of words exchanged in the house". His mother carries a burden of frustration for what she thinks is best for her children.

It is puzzling why they didn't set aside a special family time for only speaking in Spanish. Were the nuns and society so intimidating to Rodriguez's parents that bargaining never came to mind? His parents are overwhelmed with fury and sadness now that they have been robbed of their cherish communication with their children. Losing the ability to speak Spanish alienates Rodriguez from his mother, father, and relatives. Aunts, uncles and family friends because of his inability to speak Spanish ridicule Rodriguez. Guilt blocks the way for him to speak his private language.

'Yet even during those years of guilt, I was coming to grasp certain consoling truths about language and intimacy... ". Through this overwhelming feeling of betrayal, Rodriguez lets the reader realize there is an ability to break through the language barrier. 'Intimacy is not created by language, it is created by intimates".

Even though Rodriguez and his grandmother could not speak through language, they communicated through sounds and emotions. The way a person smiled at him, or placed their hand on his shoulder conveyed a message bigger than language.