Achievement of Desire - THEMES

1. Changing family dynamics

1.1. "After the year in England, I spent three summer months living with my mother and father. It no longer seemed very important to me that we had little to say." (544)

1.2. " The 'scholarship boy' reaches a different conclusion. He cannot afford to admire his parents. He permits himself embarrassment at their lack of education."(518)

1.3. "It mattered that education was changing me. It never ceased to matter. My brothers and sisters would giggle at our mother's mispronounced words." (520)

1.4. "I intended to hurt my mother and father. I was still angry at them for having encouraged me toward classroom English." (537)

1.5. "I rarely looked away from my books — or back on my memories. Nights when relatives visited and the front rooms were warmed by Spanish sounds, I slipped quietly out of the house." (538)

1.6. My parents and I sat in the kitchen for a conversation..we tried to make our conversation seem like more than interview." (541)

2. Balance -

2.1. pg. 549 - " I needed to learn how far I moved from my past to determine how fast I would be able to recover something of it once again."

3. Love

3.1. pg. 549 "I guestured and laughed just like my mother another time I saw from myself, my father's eyes were just like my own."

4. Authority

4.1. Pg. 536 " The kind of allegiance the young student had given his mother and father, only days earlier he transfers to his teacher - the new figure of authority."

5. Power

5.1. Pg. 550 "Because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents. My education had finally given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact."