Richard Rodriguez's' The Achievement of Desire is a story self-identity and culture. Having grown up with parents who remained with the traditions of their Hispanic culture, Richards's ambition to learn, and to be like his teachers, separated him from his roots. Almost immediately at a young age Richard realizes learning requires quiet time and space that he did not have much of at home. As his desire increased to read and write so did his isolation from his parents. As much as he loved them he also bared a load of guilt from being embarrassed by their thick accents and behavior. .
The boy in the story spent all his free time reading and studying. He spent his time trying to figure out what his teachers wanted from him. " These books have made me all that I am."" That was the kind of remark I could not ignore- (Rodriguez 634). This is a good example of that. This is also an example of the "banking concept of education- that Paulo Freire wrote about. He had a goal to learn the material, almost memorize it. "Most books, of course, I barely understood- (Rodriguez 634). This is definitely not literate. The basic meaning of -to be literate "is being able to read, but literacy is a lot more. It is understanding what you read, and looking past the words on the page to understand what the message is that the author is sending to you. Everyone who reads has a different view of what the author meant, and the author might be all together different. It doesn't mean that the reader is wrong, but that they are questioning the text "this is literacy. .
This student had a goal to be enlighten and at some point along the road to enlightenment, the talented student understood that the adult world that has been modeled for him by his parents is not the one in which he will live. He regretted that he was leaving behind the family life that he cherished; yet he found himself more and more frequently ashamed of his unlearned parents.