Exile is often associated with punishment, the result of a wrongdoing. It can consume the human spirit, creating a longing for home and comfort. However, through the hardships of isolation, a person can find themselves discovering their gumption and stride in life. This can be readily seen in Tobias Wolff’s Old School, where an unnamed narrator attends a high-class preparatory school which has an extremely competitive focus on literature. In the story, three authors, Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway, come to visit campus, and are available for a one-on-one meeting to the winner of a writing contest. Through the narrator’s quest to meet the authors, he finds himself in internal and external exile. While dealing with this exile, he
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The boy feels uncomfortable with what makes his writing his, and steers away from letting his inner thoughts onto paper. The narrator is subsequently cut-off from the writing-focused environment of the school, unable to voice his true literary yearnings and motives because he does not want to bring attention to what sets him apart; his style and faith. The narrator continually chooses to not divulge the secret of his Jewish ancestry to his peers because the Jewish boys at the schools had a, “subtly charged field around them, an air of apartness” (Wolff, 24). Through his discomfort with putting his ideas to paper, he finds his inner voice in writing, yet is still held in internal exile by the judgement of his peers. This is evident when the narrator expresses his reservations about submitting his poem surrounding a fireman the morning after dealing with a blaze into the Frost contest. The mere fact of having this idea shows growth in his comfort with writing, as he is beginning to find his touch on paper. However, when he says, “[the poem] was too close to home” (Wolff, 35), the boy shows his reluctance to submit the piece, as he is afraid of what his peers could make of his personal work, leading to further isolation from his writing-focused …show more content…
The narrator still finds himself in internal exile from a place of understanding in his writing, a home that all of the boys in the school seem to be a part of. However, this isolation makes him search desperately for his voice, and he is eventually led to a short story called “Summer Dance.” This is the first instance in Old School where the narrator is truly comfortable with his creative spirit, even though the words that he connects to are not even his. Previously in the story, the boy found himself writing After reading the last line in “Summer Dance,” “Everything’s okay” (Wolff, 125), the narrator feels an instant connection to the writing, as the events of the story are quite tumultuous and stress-inducing, like his life at the moment. Yet, the author finds optimism in the darkness. He finds comfort and understanding through the parallels of the story with his own life, but also in the isolation that he he holds of keeping this secret. By tagging his name on the work and submitting it, the boy finds a link to something that he can call his own, as there is a feeling of the the work “looking [himself] right in the face” (Wolff, 125). Without exile from the persona of the common writer at the school (original and confident), the narrator, in this moment, seems
The boy feels uncomfortable with what makes his writing his, and steers away from letting his inner thoughts onto paper. The narrator is subsequently cut-off from the writing-focused environment of the school, unable to voice his true literary yearnings and motives because he does not want to bring attention to what sets him apart; his style and faith. The narrator continually chooses to not divulge the secret of his Jewish ancestry to his peers because the Jewish boys at the schools had a, “subtly charged field around them, an air of apartness” (Wolff, 24). Through his discomfort with putting his ideas to paper, he finds his inner voice in writing, yet is still held in internal exile by the judgement of his peers. This is evident when the narrator expresses his reservations about submitting his poem surrounding a fireman the morning after dealing with a blaze into the Frost contest. The mere fact of having this idea shows growth in his comfort with writing, as he is beginning to find his touch on paper. However, when he says, “[the poem] was too close to home” (Wolff, 35), the boy shows his reluctance to submit the piece, as he is afraid of what his peers could make of his personal work, leading to further isolation from his writing-focused …show more content…
The narrator still finds himself in internal exile from a place of understanding in his writing, a home that all of the boys in the school seem to be a part of. However, this isolation makes him search desperately for his voice, and he is eventually led to a short story called “Summer Dance.” This is the first instance in Old School where the narrator is truly comfortable with his creative spirit, even though the words that he connects to are not even his. Previously in the story, the boy found himself writing After reading the last line in “Summer Dance,” “Everything’s okay” (Wolff, 125), the narrator feels an instant connection to the writing, as the events of the story are quite tumultuous and stress-inducing, like his life at the moment. Yet, the author finds optimism in the darkness. He finds comfort and understanding through the parallels of the story with his own life, but also in the isolation that he he holds of keeping this secret. By tagging his name on the work and submitting it, the boy finds a link to something that he can call his own, as there is a feeling of the the work “looking [himself] right in the face” (Wolff, 125). Without exile from the persona of the common writer at the school (original and confident), the narrator, in this moment, seems