Richard Rodriguez while writing The Achievement of Desire faces a difficult obstacle of working with a prior text. Rodriguez uses Hoggart's concept of a "scholarship boy" and applies it to his own life. Yet something is missing, there is something not right about the "scholarship boy" Rodriguez claims to be. Rodriguez's "scholarship" boy isn't exactly what Hoggart defines as one to be; he is actually very different. Rodriguez picks and chooses what parts of Hoggart's "scholarship boy" he wants to use to apply to his own life. He wants to create a specific image for his readers and by manipulating Hoggart's theory he successfully forms this image he is longing for. In The Achievement of Desire, it is apparent that Rodriguez makes choices about what to write about Hoggart's text. He makes certain choices of what to include and what not to. By taking parts of Hoggart's theory, he transforms it into his own. Rodriguez uses the scholarship boy theory and applies it to his own life to benefit himself.
             The thing that is important to realize is that it is Hoggart's theory, not Rodriguez's. The scholarship boy that Rodriguez claims to be is in some ways, in stark contradiction with Hoggart's theory. For one, Hoggart describes a scholarship boy to be extremely close to the woman of the household, and to not have any part of the male aspect of it, which so happens to display a feminine side Rodriguez does not want to reveal.
             He is likely to be separated from the boys' groups outside the home...his detachment from them is emotionally linked with one or more aspect of his home situation- that he now tends to be closer to the women of the house than to the men...The boy spends a large part of his time at the physical centre of the home, where the woman's spirit rules...The man and the boy's brothers are outside, in the world of m...