Overcoming Hollywood In Enrique's Journey

Reality vs Vision: Overcoming Hollywood

In Enrique’s Journey Sonia Nazario wrote, “Children like Enrique dream of finding their mothers and living happily ever after. For weeks, perhaps months, these children and their mothers cling to romanticized notions of how they should feel toward each other. Then reality intrudes”(191). She is referring to children from Central America who follow their mothers to the United States. They have felt abandoned and the only thing that they think will help them feel better is seeing their mothers again. Students starting college across The United States have a similar experience. They have “romanticized” their college experience, and it can take a while for reality to show them that they couldn’t be more wrong.

He, like other children in Central America, idolizes his mother that has left to find work in the United States. He has no idea of the pains that his mother goes to barely make ends meet and somehow send money back to her children in Honduras. Enrique begins to see finding her as a the only way to fix his life. The same thing happens to teenagers all across the United States. They see what Hollywood calls the “typical college experience” in movies like Animal House and in television shows like Greek. They show drinking and partying as the center of college life. When academics are mentioned, the characters are either cramming for exams or creating cheating rings to avoid worrying. Students think that they won’t have to go to class and won’t have to worry about studying because you can learn everything from cramming the night before an exam. Hollywood has given both groups an unrealistic view of life and sets them up for a rude awakening once they see what reality holds for