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Analysis Of This Boy's Life By Tobias Wolff

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In the memoir This Boy’s Life, the author, Tobias Wolff explains and shows how both your peers and parents have a big effect on your life.

In the beginning of the book and in the beginning of his life Toby aka Jack just started out “normal”, whatever that means. He had no influences set upon him to change his life, yet that naturally would come because it always does. As he began to make friends where he was living he began to do the things that they wanted to do. He and his friends didn’t have the best of behavior but it really didn’t start out all THAT bad, one thing though was that they were easing him into a lifestyle where his behavior would get worse and worse. “But first we made our rounds. As we left school we followed girls at a …show more content…

One time while after they had been drinking they stole some gas and got in a lot of trouble. One of his friends, Chuck, also impregnated a girl they knew and Chuck and his friends who had been involved were going to go to end up in prison for had happened. Jack luckily hadn’t been involved in that incident and realized after seeing what was happening to his friends and was really affected after seeing the situation that the family he stole from were in. He said this about what he felt after seeing the family and their farm and the state everything was in; “Everything I saw thereafter forced the knowledge in deeper. These people weren’t making it. They were near the edge, and I had nudged them that much farther along. Not much, but enough to take away some of their margin. Returning the gas didn’t change that. The real harm was in their knowing that someone could come upon them in this state, and pause to do them injury. It had to make them feel small and alone, knowing this---that was the harm we had done. I understood some of this and felt the rest.”

In the memoir This Boy’s Life you learn how both your parents and your peers can have a big effect on your life and lifestyle. The effects they can have on you can be both good and bad and you can learn from the things they did to affect you. Your life can change based on the ways people affect you and the ways you react

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