Genre
Memoir
Setting and Context
The action takes place in America and in England from approximately the year the author was born in 1944 to the year he published the book, 1982.
Narrator and Point of View
The memoir is told from a first person subjective point of view and the narrator is the author himself, Richard Rodriguez.
Tone and Mood
Neutral, hopeful
Protagonist and Antagonist
There is no protagonist and antagonist since the book is a memoir.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is an internal one because Rodriguez is torn between his desire to gain more knowledge and his desire to be closer to his parents and to his relatives in general.
Climax
There is no climax since the book is a collection of autobiographical essays.
Foreshadowing
The fact that Rodriguez admits that he studied at a catholic school foreshadows his later statement about religion and about his fascination with it.
Understatement
When Rodriguez claims that he likes his life to be private, proves to be an understatement as he has no problem talking about matters considered private by his parents.
Allusions
N/A
Imagery
For a big portion of the book, Rodriguez portrays his parents as being distant and unable to understand his way of life. Because of this, they became distant and this affected Rodriguez but also made him stronger because then he had to learn how to rely on himself.
Paradox
Rodriguez attitude when learning English as a foreign language is quite paradoxical. Rodriguez was discouraged by his family who did not know how to communicate properly with Rodriguez in English. This however made Rodriguez only want more to learn and master the English language.
Parallelism
Towards the end of the memoir, Rodriguez remembers a dinner he had with his family and at that dinner, his sister brought her kids along. One of her children, a little boy roughly the same age Rodriguez was when he started school, is compared by Rodriguez’s sister with him. The parallel between the two shows that a thirst for knowledge is not something commonly found in the children who were socially disadvantaged but rather something that exists in everyone and something that everyone has in some form.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The dark skin is used in the essays in a metonymical sense to make reference to the idea of financial disadvantage and detriment.
Personification
N/A
