Themes and Motifs

Themes and Motifs

In my mind, the general purpose of this memoir was simply to let the world see into the childhood of Tobias Wolff and view the hardships that he had to endure. This very straightforward purpose for writing this book had a very important theme: coping with unmet expectations. From the outset of the story these lofty expectations set by the Wolff’s marred their trek towards new and happy lives in the west. The first summary by Jack of what is currently occurring in his life is “It was 1955 and we were driving from Florida to Utah to get away from a man my mother was afraid of and to get rich on uranium” (4). After further reading this dream falls flat on its face after only a few more pages and is followed by many other false hopes throughout the novel such as a plan to run away to Alaska and a plan to move to Paris with his uncle and aunt to escape his abusive stepfather. These numerous occasions of expectations held too high for reality, seem like they would overwhelm Wolff, however the opposite is true. Whenever one of these dreams was crushed he would simply find another aspiration to set his heart on and help him cope with the horrible situation he was living through in the present.

Another portion of the book related to Wolff’s purpose of conveying the difficulties of his childhood was the reappearing motif of driving quickly or recklessly. When Dwight was driving Jack up to Chinook for the summer he stopped at a tavern and when he emerged he began driving home extremely quickly to try and frighten Jack into submission. Wolff said that, “He drove fast but I didn’t worry until we hit a series of curves and the car began to fishtail,” while driving over “a stretch of road [that] ran alongside a steep gorge” (89). This type of reckless behavior must have numbed Jack towards the dangers of driving quickly because as he got older he began to do the same thing with his friends, even going as far as to sneak “out of the house after midnight to take the car for joyrides” (174).

Personal Review

Personal Review

This Boy’s Life has to be one of my favorite books that I have read during high school, which I think is mostly a result of my ability to relate to the book because of similarities in the author’s and my childhood. Needless to say, our two experiences were nowhere near similar, aside from a few things such as being boys and liking guns.

Leaving those differences aside, I felt like this book was very enjoyable to read, especially because it was easy to understand and some of the situations Wolff had to endure were, although painful, very absorbing. One of the aspects that I especially enjoyed were the narrations made towards events that occurred when Wolff was a child, however using his writing ability to describe them in the mind of an adult. This descriptions made by the author reminded me of the movie “The Christmas Story” and the commentaries that an adult Ralph made about his comical childhood experiences with Christmas. Another reason why I enjoyed this novel was because of the numerous descriptions Wolff’s surroundings, which were able to create very vivid pictures of life in Utah, Seattle, and finally Concrete. The most interesting facet of these descriptions was the absence of rhetorical strategies, which in most books are the key to creating vibrant pictures in the readers’ minds. The only other author I have encountered with a writing style similar to Wolff is Ernest Hemingway who uses very few rhetorical strategies because he believes in limiting elaborate and flowery style and diction used by authors such as Hawthorne or Dickens. This novel was extremely engaging for me and there were not any detractors that I could think of.

Character

Character

One of the more important characters in This Boy’s Life is Dwight, Jack’s stepfather who has an obsession with maintaining his own self-confidence and self-importance by making his primary goal in their household, to break down all those around him, primarily Jack and Rosemary Wolff. Towards the beginning of the Wolff family’s relationship with Dwight, he seemed like a kind and well-mannered mechanic from a rural town. While Dwight was visiting for one of the first times, Jack described him as being “very nice, very considerate” (63). This was one of the only times when Jack actually complemented Dwight, but even when he did his tone was somewhat half hearted and lacking very much force.

The show that Dwight had been putting on to win over Rosemary ended abruptly when Jack was riding up to Chinook with him and left the car on the way to get himself a drink at a tavern. When he returned he immediately confronted Jack with word he had heard about Jack being a “hotshot” in Seattle and told him “you pull that hotshot stuff around me and I’ll snatch you bald headed, you understand?” (91). He then followed that up with, “You’re in for a change, mister. You got that? You’re in for a whole nother ball game,” (91) all this while drunkenly speeding towards Chinook. This new reality for Jack brought on an extremely poor phase in his life when he was consistently beaten, tricked, and lied to by Dwight, who even went as far as to tell Jack that the money he made from his newspaper route would go to a separate bank account for the future, while he instead, spent it all on buying a small arsenal for his own hunting pleasure. Instead of being the new start that Jack and Rosemary had hoped for, Dwight became just another roadblock in the happy life that they had hoped for.

Symbol

Symbol

As a child traveling with his mother to escape the problems caused by her former relationship, Tobias Wolff was a child that lacked, not only identity, but also the power to do what he wanted. Soon after leaving Wolff made a deal with his mother that he would change his name to Jack, which helped him secure the identity that his parental troubles had helped lose. Once the pair arrived in Utah his mother’s boyfriend gave Jack the present of a Winchester rifle which in time would be one of Jack’s main sources of power. Shortly after receiving the rifle Jack described himself as needing “that rifle, for itself and for the way it completed me when [he] held it” (23). The emotion that Jack shows toward the rifle in this statement shows the renewed confidence and control that Jack feels when he has it at his disposal.

The longer Jack was exposed to the Winchester, the more addicted he became to this sensation of power, and the further he went to exploit it. This buildup of desire to express that new power he had, reached a breaking point when, after previously only romping around the house with the rifle in hand, he shot a squirrel from the porch of his home. While he did not receive any consequences for this mistake, it did scare him away from the Winchester for a while only to be lulled back to it by the added comfort it gave him in difficult situations.

Jack kept the rifle close during the next couple of years because of the comfort, power, and protection it represented regarding himself as a child and his mother as a woman in a generally weak role. This lasted until his new stepfather Dwight traded it for a very poor quality hunting dog while Jack was at school. This represented the transfer of power from Jake to Dwight and the new hardships that would ensue.

Rhetorical Strategies

Rhetorical Strategies

• Personification- “The sound grew distant, then faded in the wind that sighed in the trees all around us.” (3)
• Imagery/Simile- “Phil had been badly burned in a warehouse fire that left his skin blister-smooth and invested with an angry glow, as if the fire still burned somewhere inside of him.” (40)
• Simile- “I could have finished them off earlier but I slipped into daydreams and sat frozen like a kitchen boy in a spellbound castle…” (96)
• Simile- “…wriggling his hips girlishly as he spun away from the furious hulks who pursued him, slipping between them like a trout shooting down a boulder-strewn creek.” (127)

One of the most interesting parts about This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff is the very straight-forward style, which Wolff uses to help tell the story of his many times traumatic childhood. This less ornamental style of writing can be compared to the book we are currently reading, The Sun Also Rises, because of the lack of rhetorical strategies and other features that the authors deem unnecessary. While there is an evident lack of many rhetorical strategies Wolff still employs a few, such as personification, imagery, and especially similes. Most importantly, these simile are used to create more interest for the reader and better describe Wolff’s various childhood situations, but their presence as a whole is minimal and the few times when they are included they are not expanded very far.