"For the Love of Books".

Essay by sharkbaitHigh School, 12th gradeA-, January 2004

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"Education is the key to success" is a famous quote that everyone is familiar with. Nowadays if you are not educated you will have a hard time trying to succeed and may even give up too early. Richard Rodriguez's "The Achievement of Desire", and Malcolm X's "Learning to Read" are both similar and different in how and why they educated themselves. Malcolm X taught himself because he wanted to be a well educated African American. Richard Rodriguez had a drive in him to study and get through school even though when he started he could not speak English. These two men both learned about life and themselves through their studies. Education was important to not just their careers but also to themselves to become more prominent role models.

Richard Rodriguez is just that, a perfect role model to those who struggle learning another language and more over earning an education in the other language.

Richard Rodriguez loved to read and every chance that he got, he made sure he read. While his brothers and sisters played outside he was in a closet reading, hiding from his mother so that she wouldn't try and send him outside to play. Richard was very motivated with the accomplishments of his brother and sisters, and ambition of his earliest teachers, "My earliest teachers, the nuns, made my success their ambition. And my brother and both my sisters were very good students." (195). Although Rodriguez appreciated the ambition of his teachers and yearned for the good student status of his siblings, Rodriguez doesn't take this into account for his success, "As important as these factors were, however, they account inadequately for my academic advance." (196). Rodriguez describes himself as a scholarship boy. A scholarship boy is a prized student. A student who stops at...