Sunday, October 26, 2014

Rodriguez: Sacrificing private identity for public identity- Revisited

            The main Idea from Rodriguez's piece Aria, is summed up by his quote, "Children lose a degree of individuality assimilated into public society"(38), as this piece is about a boy who had to reform to the American way by speaking English. He had lost connection with his culture and more importantly family. The quotes that I felt were the most important were the ones that show the importance of family life and school life and how they should to an extent be separated, as the quotes I looked at show how the "Familiar setting of home" had changed which is sad.
 
"From the doorway of another room, spying the visitors, I noted the incongruity-the clash of two worlds, the faces and voices of school intruding upon the familiar setting of home" (35)
 
"The special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates. We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness" (36)
 
"My mother! My father! After English became my primary language, I no longer knew what words to use in addressing my parents. The old Spanish words(those tender accents of sound) I had used earlier-mama and papa-I couldn't use any more. They would have been too painful reminders of how much had changed my life" (37)
 
"But my father was not shy. I realized, when I'd watch him speaking Spanish with relatives. Using Spanish, he was quickly effusive. Especially when talking with other men, his voice would spark, flicker, flare alive with sounds. In Spanish, he expressed ideas and feelings he rarely revealed in English. With firm Spanish sounds, he conveyed confidence and authority English would never allow him" (37-38)
 
"I would have been happier about my public success had I not sometimes recalled what it had been like earlier, when my family had conveyed its intimacy through a set of conveniently private sounds" (38)
 
Coming from other students blogs in the class that helped me find the main idea of this article:
 
1.) From Erika's
 blog, I really liked  her Connection she used;
I remember on my first day of first grade, I was seated next to an unfamiliar face. I looked at the boy's name tag on his desk and saw that his name was Achille. As I tried to speak to him and get to know him better, I realized that he became overwhelmed and began to cry. I later in the day found out that he was a new student from France and that he knew no English. As the year went on, he became more familiar with the English language, he accounted it to the fact that his parents also made an effort to speak English at home. Within a couple years of being at our school he became fluent in English and even admitted to not remembering a lot of French. It was apparent, that that much like Rodriguez that even though he knew that he needed to speak English to be successful in America, he passionately missed his French roots.
 
 
 
3.)  "bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of 'individuality' by becoming assimilated into public society. But the bilinguists simplisticlaly scorn the value and necessity of assmilation. They do that seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do that 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 individuality." (Rodriguez, 39)
(Lindsey's Blog )
 
4.)  "Without question, it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom. I would have felt much less afraid. I would have trusted them and responded with ease."(34) (Anthony's Blog )
 
5.) "Those gringo sounds they uttered startled me. Pushed me away. In that moment of trivial misunderstanding and profound insight, I felt my throat twisted by unsounded grief”. (35) (Gianna's blog )
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment