Metaphor for knowledge
Rodriguez mentions on numerous times his love for knowledge and books despite confessing that sometimes he had a hard time understanding them completely. Rodriguez uses here the books he read also as a metaphor for knowledge as he admitted that the books he read shaped him as a person and changed his perception about the world.
His memoir like a pastoral
From the prologue, Rodriguez compares his memoirs with a pastoral about the middle-class. The term pastoral is usually used to refer to some piece of art portraying the idyllic life of the peasants, living sometimes in an environment considered by many as being perfect. By comparing his book with a pastoral and by claiming that his memoir should represent the lives of the middle-class in general, the author highlights the idea that he didn’t want to take a fatalist approach and wanted rather to present the good sides and the positive aspects in his life.
Books as strange tools
Rodriguez mentions that in one of the books he read by Hoggart, books were compared to strange tools when they were read by the scholarship boys. Rodriguez admits that for him as well, books were strange tools because sometimes he didn’t understand them completely. Despite this, he continued to read them and try to understand them regardless.
Education as a process
When Rodriguez talks about education, he compares education with a long process, tiring and "unglamorous’’. Education as a process poses many difficulties and only those who tried to better themselves were able to see just how much effort it implied. Through this comparison, Rodriguez wants to emphasize just how hard it can be to achieve a certain level of knowledge and education and how many things it implies.
Silence
Silence is an element that appears often in the memoir. Silence is however used here as a metaphor and it is used to suggest a lack of public involvement. Rodriguez is silent in public environments because he feels insecure about his identity. In public, he had no identity but this didn’t apply in private where he identified with his parents’ culture and national identity. After finding his place, Rodriguez was able for the first time to escape the silence that plagued him until his adult years.
