Richard Rodriguez, in Hunger of Memory

His outlook is profoundly pessimistic, for he offers no true solutions about the problems he names. His complaints about information and the socioeconomic system would seem to call for nothing less(prenominal) than outright revolution, just now he is far too ofttimes a assort of that system, far too ofttimes a recipient of its rewards, to be a revolutionary. He is, in fact, a approximately unpleasant individual to accompany for 200 pages, for his crossness and bitterness, however justified, give his work a nasty, humorless atmosphere. whatsoever reasonable or useful arguments he might be making with respect to education, family dynamics, cross-culturalism, bilingualistism, or assimilation, his bitter, even hateful view toward life, otherwise human beings, and especially himself, seriously undermines those arguments. His search for subjects to begrudge or deride also blinds him at times to realness itself. For example, referring to his lectures at ghetto high up schools, Rodriguez not only portrays those schools as shape shows, exactly goes so far as to assume that the students be "free" because of the boldness of their fashions and physical posing (137). Is the author so blinded by his obsession with the material surface, and by his self-centred bitterness, that he is even momentarily unaware of the profound problems of most if not all students in ghetto schools? Or is he so focused on his own pain that he is incompetent of acknowledging others' pain?

The author is alienated from the society and the educatio

Rodriguez's major problem with affirmative action and bilingual education is that those programs cause the individual to see himself as a minority, which is the beginning of alienation. At the same time, he recognizes that his success is in part due to minority-oriented programs. He feels guilty in part because his success has prevented non-minority individuals from educational and professional success.

The ref must admiration why a man who has accomplished so umpteen goals and achieved such success could be so utterly unhappy. Rodriguez enjoys the high standard of living his education, talent and success have afforded him, but he regrets that his success has alienated him from his family and from the Mexican gloss which he loves.

When his mother reads his article about the problems he has approach because of his upbringing, he apologizes and says he "meant to praise what I had lost" (189). However, the reader has the same reaction that the author's mother has--Rodriguez is an ungrateful lout who blames everyone but himself for his misery. If he loathes his "dandy" clothing so deeply (136), he should change them immediately. If he feels alienated from his culture or other human beings, he should do whatever he necessitate to do to nurture the connections that remain, rather than further alienating himself with his forbidding whining.

Rodriguez's greatest alienation is his alienation from himself. He treats himself as a symbol, not as an individual who has suffered in life and who has enjoyed life, who is exactly human. Rodriguez's megalomania has led him to see himself as a symbol of everything that is terms in society, particularly what is wrong with the way society treats minorities. Because he portrays himself as a symbol of America's failures, rather than as a human being capable of love as sanitary as hate, of wisdom as well as self-centered folly. Rodriguez may suffer, but does he suffer as much as a man with no education and no job who must feed a large family?
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