This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
"This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff is a memoir that chronicles the author's childhood experiences from ages ten to fifteen, highlighting his complex relationship with his mother, Rosemary, and her romantic partners. The narrative begins with Jack, as he chooses to reinvent himself with a new name, aiming to escape feelings of unworthiness and the instability of his family life. His early years are marked by encounters with his mother's jealous boyfriend, Roy, who introduces him to risky behaviors, symbolized by a rifle that captures Jack's fascination with danger.
After moving to Seattle, Jack grapples with the challenges of living with Dwight, Rosemary’s new husband, whose strict control and harsh demeanor exacerbate Jack's feelings of alienation. As he navigates this turbulent environment, Jack's propensity for lying and petty theft emerges, reflecting his inner turmoil and desperate need for escape. The memoir also touches on Jack's friendships and social struggles, particularly with his sensitive friend Arthur, and ultimately leads to his acceptance into a prestigious boarding school, a significant turning point in his life.
Wolff's writing evokes the complexity of adolescence, the quest for identity, and the impact of familial relationships, all while exploring themes of self-invention and moral ambiguity. The narrative invites readers to reflect on the formative experiences that shape one's character and choices, offering a poignant look at the struggles of a young boy seeking his place in the world.
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This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1989
Type of work: Memoir
The Work
In This Boy’s Life, Wolff offers a detailed, highly subjective portrait of himself and his family from the time that he was ten until he leaves for boarding school at fifteen. He develops a portrait of himself as someone with a passion for self-invention, beginning with his decision to change his name to “Jack,” upon his arrival in a new town with his mother, Rosemary, in 1955. However, his new name does not appease the nagging sense of unworthiness he carries with him everywhere nor his tendency to invent stories about himself. Jack’s existence is complicated by his mother’s love life. First, he is subjected to her jealous boyfriend, Roy, who appears to young Jack as a “man’s man.” Roy buys him a rifle and teaches him to shoot. The gun proves to be a dangerous temptation to the lonely young boy, who likes to aim it out the window and once shoots a squirrel. When Rosemary decides that they are going to leave Roy and travel to a new town, Jack insists on taking the rifle with him, to his mother’s displeasure. His attachment to the gun foreshadows his attraction to certain kinds of risky and even antisocial behavior, which continue once the duo move to Seattle and Rosemary embarks on another tempestuous relationship.
A few months after arriving in Seattle, Rosemary begins to date Dwight, a mechanic with three teenagers of his own, who lives three hours north in the town of Chinook. Despite her mild reservations and Jack’s strong resistance, Rosemary agrees to consider Dwight’s proposal of marriage, with an unusual condition: She wants Jack to live for several months with Dwight and his children while she continues to work in Seattle. If it looks like they can make a go of it as a family, she will agree to marry him. She is partly motivated by the desire to get Jack out of his current school, where he already has a reputation as a troublemaker. Thus begins a period of great stress for Jack, mixed in with some positive memories of time spent with Dwight’s children: pathetic Pearl, restless Skipper, and pretty Norma. Dwight takes control of Jack’s spare time, enrolling him in the Boy Scouts, securing him a paper route, and assigning him an array of petty chores. Despite his aversion to Dwight, Jack is reluctant to let his mother know his real feelings, and within a few months, Dwight and Rosemary are married.
The bulk of the memoir details the poisonous atmosphere of life with Dwight, along with the growing sense of restlessness and amorality that lead Jack to accept Dwight’s assessment of him as a liar and a thief. He lies so often that he begins to believe his own fabrications, and his thefts progress from filching candy to taking Dwight’s possessions and pawning them. The only label that makes him uncomfortable is that of “sissy,” which derives in part from Jack’s friendship with a sensitive, unusual boy named Arthur, who is in some ways his best friend yet whom he often rejects. Jack’s other companions are generally drinkers and troublemakers. Jack is so unhappy with his life that he plots various avenues of escape. Eventually, Jack’s alienation from Dwight is so complete that Rosemary arranges for him to live instead with the family of a friend, Chuck Bolger. Although Chuck is generous and at times shows signs of a good heart, he is also a heavy drinker and reckless about sex. Just at the point when Chuck is accused of statutory rape, Jack hears that he has been accepted at the Hill School in Pennsylvania with a scholarship covering most of the costs. There is little question in his mind that he wants to go, although he is harboring a secret: The transcript and letters of recommendation he sent with his application were faked. They represented him as an A student, when in reality he was earning Cs. He wrote the letters based on an image of himself that he felt could have been true, if only circumstances had been different.
This Boy’s Life concludes with a quick overview of the months before Jack’s departure for boarding school, when he lived briefly with his father and brother in California, followed by a summary of only a few paragraphs about his time at the Hill School. We learn that Jack continued to have trouble following rules and ultimately was asked to leave the school, whereupon he enlisted in the army, returning to the world of guns and uniforms familiar to him from his Boy Scout days. Like Mark Twain’s character Huckleberry Finn or a confidence man from a Herman Melville novel, Jack is a liar, yet he gains the reader’s trust and inspires attention to the story of his boyhood.
Sources for Further Study
The Atlantic. CCLXIII, February, 1989, p. 83.
The Christian Science Monitor. February 16, 1989, p. 13.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. January 8, 1989, p. 3.
The New York Times Book Review. XCIV, January 15, 1989, p. 1.
The New Yorker. LXV, March 6, 1989, p. 112.
Newsweek. CXIII, January 23, 1989, p. 64.
Publishers Weekly CCXXXIV, December 9, 1988, p. 50.
Time. CXXXIII, February 6, 1989, p. 70.
The Times Literary Supplement. May 12, 1989, p. 508.
The Washington Post Book World XIX, January 22, 1989, p. 3.