Can he hold on to what he loves? (#3, Ch 2-4) (p28-45)

Tell what you noticed about the characters or people in the chapter or book...such as what made them act as they did or how they changed.

When Rodriguez is forced to speak English even in his own home, it changes both his life and the lives of his family. "In an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and accentuated our family's closeness." (Rodriguez 21) After this his relationship with his siblings and especially his parents changes. His parents are uncomfortable speaking English and so the two generations begin to drift a part. During Chapter 3 Spanish is still Rodriguez's "language of closeness" and because he is always speaking English he looses his feelings of closeness with others.
After the nuns convince his parents to allow him only to speak English at home something inside of him changes. For a few weeks he resists this, but after wards he begins to speak up in class. Because he is speaking the "public language" he begins to feel more at ease with *"los gringos". "I was increasingly confident of my own public identity." (25)

ch3

As he grows accustomed to English he begins to lose the ability to speak Spanish with confidence. Other Latinos including his visiting family start calling him "pocho". "A Spanish dictionary defines that word as an adjective meaning 'colorless' or 'bland.' But I heard it as a noun, naming the Mexican-American who, in becoming an American, forgets his native society" (Rodriguez 29).

He also begins to befriend "los gringos" on his block. This is important because when family visits from Mexico they call out to him in Spanish. When he tries to translate to his friends he realizes that he can't because the words would lose their meaning. At the end of chapter 3 Rodriguez comes up with the conclusion that "Intimacy is not created by a particular language; it is created by intimates" (Rodriguez 32). Rodriguez is beginning to find his identity both in his home and in society and realizes that he can have both "lives".


By the end of Chapter 4 Rodriguez is a grown man. When he remembers back to his grandmother's last words to him before she died he says that he could remember some of the things that she had told him, but that he could not "quote the message of intimacy she conveyed with her voice" (Rodriguez 39). He concludes the intimacy does not have to do with language, but with the people who make it.

Because Rodriguez is having problems with family closeness in this section I looked that up and found an interesting article on the importance of family closeness. It explained how everyone wants to feel accepted and wants to "belong" to their family. It is important for families to stay close because other wise children can hold onto the hurt when they grow up. Being separated also makes it harder for them in public settings, which is interesting because it seemed that sometimes being further from his family made him closer in public, but other times he would hide away in his books or education and it could have been partially because of the lack of connection he was feeling at home.


* los gringos is the Latino name for American people who are not Latino, specifically white people.