The Education of Richard Rodriguez

I am . . . taken by the symbols of leisure and wealth. . . . For me those . . . symbols are reassuring reminders of public success. I tempt vulgarity to be reassured. I am filled with the gaudy delight, the monstrous grace of the nouveau riche (136-137).

The greatest "differences" in the book, then, are the author's differences with himself., He is a man at war with himself, with his past, with his family, his readers, his success. It does not seem likely that he will come to form an "alliance" with himself over these differences. It almost seems as if these differences are what make him who he is.

However, the fact that the author wrote this book in the first place must be seen as a sign of hope that he might be able to do away with some of the differences he sees around him. If he had no hope about overcoming these differences, it does not seem that he would have written the boo

. . .
is differences with the world. He writes about entering Stanford: "I would remain a Catholic, but a Catholic defined by a non-Catholic world. This is how I think of myself now" (80). The author does not focus on ways to overcome these differences, but at least seems to be trying to come to a place of acceptance about them. There are differences based on class as well: Upper-class pastoral can admit envy for the rustic life as an arrogant way of reminding its listeners of their difference---their own public power and civic position. . . . Unlike the upper class, the middle-class lives in a public world, lacking great individual power and standing 96). Not only are there great differences between the upper and middle-class, there are great differences between those classes and the lower classes. The author is himself from a lower class background, but he is now a well-off man. He has left his family behind for the life of the city: "This was my coming of age: I became a man by becoming a public man" (7). We see that there seems to be nothing but differences, then. Differences between Rodriguez and his family, between classes, between the city and country, between his past and his present, and between the two cultures of whites
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1644
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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