Journal Post #3 - Public Separateness

     Tomas Rivera’s novella, “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him” deals with a boy’s desire to find his place in a society that he often feels alienated from. At school he is met with discrimination, embarrassment, and separateness from the other students that his white peers will most likely never experience. One day he decides not to go to class after recalling “how the teacher would spank him for sure because he didn’t know the words.” On another occasion he is sent to the nurse’s office to be examined for lice, because he is Mexican. The boy in Rivera’s story is becoming ever more conscious of what Richard Rodriguez, in his memoir “Aria”, “public separateness.”

     Rodriguez attributes this separateness to students not being forced to learn English, and allowing them, because of bilingual education to continue to speak Spanish in the midst of their English speaking peers. Though this form of bilingualism accommodates speakers of other languages in schools, students will not find the same accommodations after leaving school and entering a society that remains foreign to them. According to Rodriguez, the “great lesson of school” is to teach students that they have a “public identity” and bilingual education delays this because it allows disadvantaged youth to continue speaking their “private language.” This private language is what the student speaks at home. If the private language remains the student’s first language and the public language (English) is not learned, upward mobility in public life will be difficult to come by. Rodriguez states: “The fact is that only in private – with intimates – is separateness from the crowd a perquisite for individuality.” Public separateness does bring people together in private, united by disadvantages in public life.

     That said, the protagonist in Rivera’s story has not fallen prey to bilingual education, as it has yet to be instituted. “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him,” takes place in the fifties and bilingual education, according to Rodriguez, “was popularized in the seventies.” But he does feel alienated from his peers because of language – he has yet to learn English well enough to function in public life. Teachers try to get him to participate in class by reading but he found it nearly impossible. “When it was my turn to read, I couldn’t. I could hear myself. And I could hear that no words were coming out.” Rodriguez also found himself in this situation: “I continued to mumble… I remained dazed, diffident, afraid.” Both face a silence in public life that sets them apart from the crowd. Silence is a main theme for both writers. The two individuals, Rodriguez, and Rivera’s protagonist gain their individuality from this silence, but this kind of individuality is really just the “public separateness” that Rodriguez eloquently describes.

     Both of these authors write of the trials and tribulations of growing up in a public life that is vastly different from private life.

     In a society that values individuality and diversity, is individuality gained from feeling alienated important to preserve?