Marin, Isaac Ms.

Armstrong AP English Lit 12/15/11 Complexion Complex

Marin 1

Throughout life, we are faced with paradoxes, both internal and external. Try as one might, the answer is always seemingly always out of out reach. These paradoxes can lead one to both a dark path and one of enlightenment. It all depends on how one decides to attack it. In his essay, Complexion, Richard Rodriguez uses parentheses and colloquialisms to describe and come to terms with the paradox that his skin color cursed him with. Parentheses allows Rodriguez to address his paradox. The use of parentheses sets the words inside them apart. While parenthesis is normally reserved for extra information, Rodriguez uses it to make it stand out from the rest of the information in an attempt to exalt it above his other writing. The usually hard to comprehend paradox becomes easy to see as the key information needed to see the paradox stands out. Rodriguez reveals this paradox when he admits that los pobres, the dark-skinned migrant workers were (...the poor, the pitful, the powerless ones. But paradoxically also power men. They were the men with brown-muscled arms he stared at awe on Saturday morning when they showed up downtown....)(113). He is amazed by dark skin and the power that it symbolizes. Part of him would like to be like them, feo and fuerte, part of him would like to prove his manhood. However, this wanting is countered by the (swirling voices of aunts, and even [his] mother's voice, whispering, whispering incessantly about lemon juice solutions and dark, feo children) (124). This directly leads to his complex, the want and disgust of darkness. He is confused by the paradox and resorts to

Marin 2 obsessively shaving his skin in an effort to lighten it. It causes a negative reaction in him, leading to his feeling of being ugly and having a low self-esteem. Furthermore, Rodriguez makes certain to acknowledge the fact that his community took dark skin to be a negative quality, so negative that they would rather risk killing a child than to have him born dark. He tells us that One aunt prescribed to her sisters the elixir of large does of castor oil during the last weeks of pregnancy. (The remedy risked an abortion) (116). The dislike of dark skin was great in his community, great enough to infect his mind with the idea that darkness was a truly unwanted thing. It would be next to impossible for him to grow up without a complexion complex while under these types of pressures and attitudes. To his family, dark skin was correlated with (Los braceros...Los pobres...) (113). It signified poverty and a life of tedious manual labor, a hard life without a chance of betterment. However, as much as Rodriguez mentions the negative, he creates a contradiction when he writes about his trips to East Coast hotels and states that (In such hotels it appears nowadays a mark of leisure and wealth to have a complexion like mine) (113). These two differing opinions create a paradox. The paradox without a doubt creates internal confusion in Rodriguez. All through his life he was told that dark skin lead to and meant poverty. However as he grows up, he realizes that his dark skin also signifies wealth and a life of relaxation. As is the nature of paradoxes, Rodriguez is left without knowing which side is the correct one. He struggles in coming to terms with it. Another technique that Rodriguez uses are colloquialisms. Complexion is riddled with Spanish words, used to express his paradox. Colloquialisms, much like parenthesis, stick out, making them noticeable and suggesting added importance. The feelings that they hold for him

Marin 3 cannot be expressed in formal language and so he must use colloquialisms. Rodriguez tells the reader that the people in his community would often set three standards for men. They must be feo, fuerte, y formal (128). These were also the average expectations of men. However, two of these feo and fuerte are also words used to describe the braceros. In his community, braceros were the ones with dark skin, and were the ones that were looked down upon. People, such as his mother, felt pity for their darkness, lamenting pobres negros(118). Machismo, a quality very much wanted in men, requires the some of the characteristics of los pobres, dark-skinned peoples who were looked down upon and unwanted. This causes a paradox. He feels obliged to be macho because of the pressure placed upon him by the men in his community and so aims for it, but in order to do so, he must be willing to embrace his dark-skin, to be able to live with it. He wants to be accepted by the men in his community but at the same time does not want to become any darker than he is. This furthers his indecision, rendering him unable to decide whether or not dark skin is truly a negative thing. While the paradox that his skin color causes him does plague him for much of his life, he does manage to come to terms with it. Rodriguez tells the reader that The summer [he] worked in the sun...made [him] physically indistinguishable from the Mexicans working nearby....[he] was not one of los pobres. What made [him] different from them was an attitude of mind... (138). It may have taken him years, but he finally was able to realize that dark skin was not a negative quality, but rather the mindset that dark skin caused the wearers to have, inevitably leading to them being taken advantage of. He literally comes to terms with the cause of the paradox when he works next to the Mexicans, when he finally comes face to face with los

Marin 4 pobres(139). This allows him to realize that it was never the dark skin that made them pobre it was their silence, their inability to talk for themselves. He realizes that one side of the paradox, that dark skin is negative, is false, rendering the paradox false. He is finally able to see that dark skin has nothing to do with where one will end up in life. He is able to realize that he can be feo, fuerte y formal without associating himself with negativity. He frees himself from his own preconceptions and is able to find the solution to what once seemed like a paradox. Coming to terms with the paradox allows him to advance his life and stirs a want to fight for the rights of dark skinned pobres. While it is unfortunate that Rodriguez's paradox skewed his self-perception for many years, he did manage to overcome it. He solved his own personal puzzle and came out a strong and confident man. He no longer allows other views to affect his own. He came to terms with his paradox and came out ahead. His story brings hope to readers, it makes them certain that no matter what physical defects they may believe they have, so long as their mindset isn't negative, it will not matter.