Free Argumentative Essay On Synthesis/Analysis Essay

While using the language of the society during the communication in public, a person might find it hard to connect the words in a string that will truly convey the initially intended meaning; at the same time, the very same person might find no obstacles in socializing with close relatives, who belong to a small closed society called «family». For this reason, some people are inevitably forced to have two usually unbalanced identities: one for home and one for the society. As a consequence, one might face the necessity to loosen the family ties and primary identity and develop his or her new public identity to have a possibility to develop one’s own knowledge, voice and spirit and, thus, invest into one’s own future. Richard Rodriguez and bell hooks indicate that the loss in private life and the gain in the public one are a necessary prerequisite for a possibly better future (where do they indicate that? You need to cite sources of this information). Furthermore, in Rodriguez’s article “Public and Private Language” and hooks’s article “Talking Back”, Rodriguez and hooks both agree that one way to escape from their home community is by moving from the uncomfortable silence to developing a voice to establish one’s own public identity (You need to cite here too, like this: Rodriguez Page Number; hooks Page Number). As Rodriguez indicated in his article, “The point was not self-expression alone but to make oneself understood by many others” (Rodriguez 165).
Despite sharing same views, both authors had to go through the dissimilar home and public life issues in order to develop a common vision of the necessity to leave a home community to reach out to own voice, own ambitions and potential, and be heard and understood by the public. From an early age, both hooks and Rodriguez learned to recognize the difference between their private and public identities, which, they felt, could never be merged. Talking about hooks, she grew up and developed in a highly gender-segregated world where “black men may have excelled in the art of poetic preaching in the male dominated church, but in the church of the home, where everyday rules of how to live and how to act were established, it was black women who preached” (297). The author was pushed into silence because of the gender inequality that was wide-spread in her society and best demonstrated during the church attendances. The prevalent views in her society were strict “old-school” stereotypes that man were supposed to preach, while women’s attempts were deemed the background music. In contrast to those views, when at home, woman used to gossip and reveal this “language so rich, so poetic” (hooks 297), the language they chose to hide from church meetings thus making it private. At the same time the story of Rodriguez was different, “English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language at home” (165). He grew up being dependent on Spanish, the language that “was the pleasing, soothing, consoling reminder of being at home” (Rodriguez 160). On the contrary, the writer considered English as a strictly “Gringos” language and described it as “never pleasing nor was it hard to hear” (Rodriguez 161). Nevertheless, he had to put up with being a minority in a neighborhood, “where all my classmates were white” (Rodriguez 159).
Though following different paths, both authors had to leave their comfort zones and forget about the traditional ways of their closed communities, in order to reach out to a wider public and unlock their potential. Whereas Rodriguez could at least find a place of comfort at home, hooks was forced to keep her opinion to herself most of the time. After witnessing women gossip in private, hooks developed “the craving to speak, to have a voice, and not just any voice but one that could be identified as belonging to me” (297). However when done so, she had to confront the unpleasant social punishment for her “crazy talk” exacted by her church and family. That being the case, the only available form of escape for her was “confessing in cheap diaries” (hooks 298). Since she was neither trusted, nor trusting at home, with her church not letting her preach, there was nothing to hold her from escaping the home community. Meanwhile, Rodriguez had what hooks wanted, which was the ability to speak freely at home and at school, whenever he chose to. Rodriguez explains, “Like others who know the pain of public alienation, we transformed the knowledge of our public separateness and made it consoling - the reminder of intimacy” (163). His family and him had a special bond, while all family members shared same feelings of estrangement and Spanish language that was always used at home. Emphasizing the love for his screen door, Rodriguez said that “the clicking tongue of the lock on the door” (163) was his assurance of home and a block from the strangers outside. For that reason, Rodriguez had no desire to pull away from his home community to learn a language of the world, where he felt a foreigner.
However, at the same time, hooks and Rodriguez’s public and private life collided, and both writers could not succeed in fulfilling their aspirations without making a choice between their two identities. In the life of Rodriguez with his perception of “the class of two worlds” (165), private suddenly became public when the nuns from his school suggested his parents to speak English instead of Spanish at home in order for their children to open up in school. While Rodriguez had an authority figures from his private and public world enforce a desire to speak the public language, English, hooks, at the same time, had no such impetus from both worlds, only limitations. Because she was a girl, they ordered her to stay silent; however, according to her, “had I been a boy, they might have encouraged me to speak believing that I might someday be called to preach” (297).
Despite the different responses from their respective home communities, hooks and Rodriguez succeeded in escaping their silence and getting involved into a purposeful communication. Everything happened rapidly for Richard, as Spanish was dropped at home, and his siblings would no longer come home after school. When portraying the change of his parents’ behavior, Rodriguez explains that “they were talking in Spanish however until, at the moment they saw me, I heard their voices change to speak English” (166). The only escape he had was no longer there, and his desperation pushed him towards his only option, which was his school. As a result, his awkward silence transformed into his public identity in the class the moment he raised his hand and spoke with confidence. He gained “calming assurance that I belonged in public” (Rodriguez 166) amongst the “Gringos”, even though it meant the slight loss of individuality and family intimacy. Similarly for hooks, she was able to use her writing to express her feelings in “Ain’t I A Woman”. Somehow she knew she “could avoid both responsibility and punishment if I did not declare myself a writer” (hooks 300). However, in order to gain her spirit and voice, she knew she had to leave her home community. Bell hooks was her new public identity, or, as she says, “a writer-identity that could challenge and subdue all impulses leading me away from speech into silence” (300). Her transition to being a writer helped her turn the criticisms of her family and church into a nourishment for her future and her “liberated voice” (hooks 301).
All things considered, throughout their articles, Rodriguez and hooks vividly emphasize that in order to gain something in life, you have to scarify something else, and your fears first of all. In Rodriguez’s case, his family relationships were weakened, and his Mexican roots were slightly lost in the process of the assimilation with the society and adoption of English as a primary language. In the same way, hooks became isolated in her home community after developing the voice and spirit she longed for as a writer. After all, Rodriguez and hooks were both able to achieve new heights under new names of their public identities: one as “Rich-head Road-ree-guess” and another as bell hooks (168). However, hooks had no support in her private and public life inside the community in gaining a voice, which was the primary reason for her to feel isolated. Rodriguez, however, felt that he could still transition from his private identity to his public one, staying happy and having good memories of both worlds that gave him the boost he initially needed to speak up. In both cases, the two authors left their silence to open up to their full potential and have a voice in the places, where they thought they did not belong. All people that currently feel “socially disadvantaged” need to know they belong in the society and will be understood regardless of their gender and race. Feeling isolated is a normal state of being for people of minorities, but one must overcome that fear in this battle for a better future that will help fulfill one’s potential.