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  • Essay / Stylistic Analysis of Parenthetical Constructions in Hunger for Memory

    Richard Rodriguez's Hunger for Autobiographical Memory describes his intellectual development from early childhood to adulthood. As the title suggests, Rodriguez recounts and reflects on the various memories important to this development. He simultaneously addresses political topics – opposing bilingual education and affirmative action – while establishing the history of his own identity as a complex architecture linking his Mexican-American origins to his class, to his religion, to his body and his profession as a writer. He does all this while alternating between the two sides of the different windows separating his public and private lives. Although he addresses each of these pillars distinctly, he complicates his identity and paradoxically constructs an anomalous architecture of a mutable self through intentionally incoherent argumentation and observable changes in his own language. Ultimately, his identity as a hyper-Americanized Mexican American constitutes the most important cornerstone of his confused self; his uses of parenthetical phrases throughout discussions of other aspects of his identity act as windows between his public and private life and as solipsistic expressions of the part of himself that he can only convey to through his writings. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayRodriguez's descriptions of his early childhood contain parenthetical sentences reflecting the birth of the conflict between his public and private life, arising from his first conceptualizations of language. Describing his private life, he keeps them mostly short, using several simple words in parentheses, amplifying their previous modified element. He remembers that he “heard [his] mother screaming. . . in Spanish (words)” (16), ironically drawing attention to – rather than downplaying – the idea of ​​“words”, thus beginning to show their importance to his development. He is already beginning to blend his early education with notions of his private racial identity, their relationship also contributing to his affinity for language. Yet at the same time he uses the nature of parenthetical punctuation to separate the two, distinctly referring to his first language, "Spanish", and "words", or language in general, as entities distinct. Likewise, he superimposes the public and private components of his identity when he writes that “inside the house, [he] would resume (assume) [his] place in the family” (16). In this case, his parenthetical “assume” redefines the “CV,” creating uncertainty about the nature of his family life; the parentheses are a window into the inner private life of his home, but he must “assume” this private identity. Thus, he defines his private life in terms of his public audience, of which he is inextricably aware. Evolving from brief expressions of his private life among his public struggles, Rodriguez's parenthetical sentences morph into solipsistic expressions of his own struggle to discover his identity while maintaining his identity. an emphasis on the role that his own writings and understanding of language played in this struggle. Discussing his use of the English language as a child, he "couldn't believe that the English language belonged to him," expanding parenthetically that "[he] didn't want to believe it" (18). This contrast between this disbelief and the absence of desire to believe reflects the solipsistic struggle to convey one's sense of identity as a variable structure. Adding layers to her writing and identity, redefining.