Comparing Old School Tobias Wolff

In his 2003 novel, Old School, Tobias Wolff, employs a 1st person point of view in order to emphasize to the reader the theme of staying true to oneself. The narrator of this novel takes us on a journey through his internal struggles. Him being the narrator verifies that it his perception on what happened. When the narrator tries to stay true to himself he gets caught up in lies which ties back into our theme that it is important to stay true to oneself. He is honest about his religious background. He leaves out the bit of information that he is Jewish from his roommates because he is embarrassed of his religion. Not only does he lie about his religion but he omits the fact that he is on a scholarship and does not come from a financially stable …show more content…
The forces are the obstacles that hold Santiago back from achieving his personal legend. He can compare to them in a way that he himself is the biggest force of them all. In the middle of the novel he contemplates whether to achieve his personal legend or to go back to spain with his sheep. The protagonists, is often also the antagonist. Santiago is his own worst enemy. He tries to save up money with the Crystal Merchant to go back home, but this is not the only time he feels self doubt. He feels self doubt also when he is robbed. Nobody said achieving a personal legend was easy but in the end the satisfaction of it is worth all the obstacles. Santiago’s biggest obstacle is himself and his decision whether to take the easy way out and go back to being a shepherd or continuing his fate. He has to accept the fact that the journey might not be easy and the problems on his journey might be so challenging that giving up becomes easier and easier, but he can't give into it. He has to accept himself and rely on his strengths to get to the end of this so called journey, we call a personal legend. Santiago's willingness to trust so easily is one of the reasons why we can say he is the antagonist as well. He needs to trust himself, “wherever [his] heart is, that is where [he] [will] find [his …show more content…
Attending such a prestigious school had many advantages over the ordinary schools. One advantage being several famous writers attend the school and are available to read student’s work. The narrator is not as lucky as his fellow classmates since he attends the boarding school on a scholarship, which is believed to be a disadvantage to his education. He loses sight of his privileges when he decides to plagiarize because he doesn’t believe in his own work. The author decided to start the novel in, “November of 1960, just a week after the general election” (Wolff 3). This is when Kennedy won the election which the narrator states “The contest between Nixon and Kennedy, which for most of us was no contest at all [...] But we wouldn’t have admitted that class played any part in our living for Kennedy” (3). Kennedy was an upperclassmen and the majority of the boarding school wanted him to win the election based on his class. The narrator states that this elite school was not a snobbish school, but yet it was indeed a rich kid school which the narrator has the opportunity to attend even though not being in his peer’s financial bracket. The author makes several comments about the Jews since this time period was after the Holocaust. For example, when the narrator gets caught singing lyrics from the Nazi