This Boy’s Life is a story of a young guy growing up struggling with his problems and fears, misunderstanding, and condemnation of others. Notably, Tobias Wolff stays focused on his desire to reinvent himself, to have a different kind of life compared to the one he is living, and to find happiness. Therefore, the paper describes and demonstrates the textual evidence of self-reinvention from the memoir.
Significantly, throughout the novel, Tobias Wolff is unhappy with his identity. The first textual evidence that illustrates his reinvention is his decision to change the name from Tobias to Jack after Jack London. Tobias was convinced that this name would provide him with “some of the strength and competence inherent” in his identity perception (Wolff 15). Additionally, Jack feels self-loathing, and the boy suffers from the feeling of unworthiness.
Consequently, he blames himself because his father left, and his mother cannot establish healthy relationships with good men. Jack states, “I was subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy… along with the certainty that everybody but my mother saw through me and did not like what they saw” (Wolff 19). To become something better, Jack creates a role model represented by a strange and moody man, Roy, with whom Jack’s mother has had a relationship in the past. Therefore, Jack claims that Roy is “what a man should be. My mother must have thought so too, once” (Wolff 22). Next, he is starting to lie about his name, grades, and, importantly, reputation.
Wolff sincerely believes that his lies will make him look like someone he desirably wants to become, for instance, Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff III, who can fit into prep school. When discussing documents for admission, Jack states, “Where it asked me for my name as I wished it to appear in the school catalog, I wrote, “Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff III” (Wolff 294). Thus, Wolff is trying on different identities to find the real himself. Jack begins to study the book “The Status Seekers” to get rid of his origin and become part of an elite society. Jack begins to study the book “The Status Seekers” to get rid of his origin and become part of elite society, “this book explained how the upper class perpetuates itself” (Wolff 236). Jack lies to others and himself, and sometimes the lie seems too natural to him.
Accordingly, one of the clearest examples is his act of forging letters of recommendation from his teachers to get accepted into an elite school. The most exciting aspect is that Jack perceives his lies as the truth, calling the fictional ideal of his personality “the splendid phantom” and trying to become him – “And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes… I saw, at last, my face” (Wolff 245). This persistent belief in his lies can be characterized as the boy’s belief in himself, so he is convinced that he is worthy of studying at an elite school despite his poor academic performance.
For instance, Jack emphasizes that it was faithful only to him, “I believed in it more than I believed in the facts… I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student” (Wolff 244). Thus, Jack argues that these forged letters are not false, but, on the contrary, truthful, since they describe his present much better than his teachers could represent. This boy does not accept that he is a thief and liar, just as Dwight asserts. Instead, Jack is a good-hearted man pushed by circumstances to do what he needs to escape from the bad fortune.
Work Cited
Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir. Grove Press, 1989.