Road to Success

Anna’s parents were immigrants from a communist country. The country was very poor, thus many objects considered expensive were seen as cheap in America; education is one such object. They would dream of starting a new life where there were no oppositions to individual freedom. When Anna’s parents came to America, they arrived with the few material items they could bring, including their high school diplomas. They went to college to learn English so that they could cope with living their new lives. However, they faced many hardships along the way. Even with the little education they had, they endured ridicule(s), linguistic and cultural problems, and tough labor with their little-more-than-minimum wage. They understood this because they knew hard work came with freedom, and with their level of education, finding a good job was difficult. They would never want their offspring to suffer as they did. For this reason, they vowed that education would be top priority for their children.

Ever since Anna could remember, she and her siblings moved from school to school, year after year, in hopes that their parents would stop forcing them to make new friends. Each school was supposed to be more challenging than the last. Every first day of their new schools, as well as every other day, Anna’s mother would say “Education is the road to success.” This was supposed to encourage Anna to continue working hard and to look forward to a bright future. It was supposed to help her think of the future, of why she receiving an education, and how this education will help her. Anna, throughout elementary school, never understood. Education is a “road”? She could “walk” on education? If that’s so, she will find success? It sounds easy! Of course, it wasn’t until junior high that she analyzed her mother’s favorite saying.

A road can be smooth or rough, and in America’s case, the “road” of education is rough. There will be rain, houses, obstacles, the sun and moon, wind and bumps. The rain represents the negative feelings Anna felt when her grades were unsatisfactory. The houses represent the places to be to learn, eat, and rest. The sun and moon represent the guidance provided by her teachers and parents. The obstacles, for example bugs, symbolize the need to triumph over a test or a bully in order to proceed through the day. The wind presses on her form, the pressure similar to that of her parents’ urges to study. The bumps are the disputes Anna would have with her mother about teenage needs. As the road went on, Anna continued to learn and build up on knowledge. At the same time, with all these obstacles, she would carry her experiences with her into her college years.

Anna then understood what her mother was trying to tell her. Her mother pushed her to attend school and learn, because she wanted Anna to have a successful future. In no way would she want Anna to roam on the streets looking for empty cans or begging for money. Anna should have a high-salary career with people looking up to her, a big house and five shiny cars, as well as own several big companies in which she were the boss. Of course, the mother’s ideas were too far-fetched, but not impossible with the education Anna was receiving. However, Anna was not aiming for such extreme goals. As appealing as her mother’s dreams sounded Anna was more content with the idea of a small house, a cute little car and a quiet but busy job in a clinic.

A metaphor is a word or phrase that refers to one idea but actually means something else. Nietzsche says that truth is “a movable host of metaphors […], a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding” (455). This writer takes this to mean that there is no “true” truth, and that truths are only metaphors that are used so much, they themselves become truths. Anna’s mother seemed to think that “education is the road to success” is the truth. Although this seems to be true when applied to American education, it doesn’t have to be. With the saying constantly being repeated, Anna would make success her goal with the help of her education, not her “truth.” The goal of success for her mother however, no matter how many times the chant was repeated, would be much tougher because she never received American high school education. Instead, the metaphor becomes her truth, her dream of an ideal future.

What is success? Nietzsche writes “Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone” (455). This writer interprets the quote to mean that people use