Sunday, February 16, 2014

"Aria" Argument




In the article "Aria" by Richard Rodriguez, the author tells his own story about having to learn English at a young age, and how it affected his childhood and his life today. As a young child, Rodriguez attended Catholic schooling that was very strict about teaching English as a child's public language. The author felt as if he had to make English his public language and that Spanish had become his private language. But even after a while, in the Rodriguez house, Spanish was not even the language they used at home to each other, it became just a part of their past. Rodriguez believes that because they chose to only speak English, his family has grown apart, because they are now able to go out with confidence and meet new people and take part in other activities. Rodriguez argues that although his family may not have such a strong connection anymore, becoming fluent in English has also benefited his family in greater ways. 

In this article I believe that Richard Rodriguez is arguing that although the idea of assimilation causes a person to lose their private individuality, they are able to gain a public individuality that will help them to be successful. The author explains that by choosing to learn English and use it as his only language, Rodriguez and his family lost the close private connections they had with each other when they stopped using Spanish. But at the same time, he is arguing that by becoming fluent in English he has achieved public success and a confidence in himself. Rodriguez's main point in this article was to explain that the loss of his private individuality helped him to gain a strong public individuality. 


"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 individuality." (39)

This website helped me to make sense of this quote a little more:

http://writingallthesewords.wordpress.com/

1 comment:

  1. It seems that you focused on the same thing that I did in my post, which is the idea of private versus public individuality, and how Rodriguez had to sacrifice the former to gain the latter. I also thought the alienation from his family that he felt once he became more proficient in English was interesting and worth mentioning, so it's great you brought that up as well. Good post!

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