Textual Analysis: Old School By Tobias Wolff

Yash Gupta
Alex Mouw
18 October 2015

Old School - Tobias Wolff
Textual Analysis

The class and racial divide has separated people for as long as they have existed. A person from a high privilege and wealth is bound to look down upon people from the lower-middle strata of society. The book ‘Old School’ by Tobias Wolff addresses this problem in a subtle, yet an intimate manner. Though not made clear in the story, the narrator’s self-consciousness of being from a different class and ethnicity played an important role in the narrator’s struggle to find his true self.
Set in an aristocratic school in one of the north eastern states, a place of fortune and tradition. ‘Old School’ by Tobias Wolff portrays the life of a teenager trying to find himself

He is also conscious about his classmates’ sentiments against Jews which is probably why he tries to conceal his jewish origins. He becomes aware of his school’s social system and his place within it. In one incident, he was whistling a song that he had heard at camp while passing by Gershon. Though he did not know what song it was, he kept whistling it. It came about to be a Nazi Marching Song. Talking of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, it turns out that Gershon was actually an elderly Jewish Janitor at the school whose family members were subjects of concentration camps. He overhears this song and as a consequence, the narrator is taken before the Dean and asked to explain his actions. Since the narrator had never revealed his Jewish background, he couldn’t ask for understanding. Later, it turns out that even his roommate was Jewish, trying to hide behind this mask of this social acceptance. This can only imply that concealing his Jewish origins are more important to the narrator than to be

one of them, however, had a significant impact on his writing compared to the others. He read the works of Ayn Rand with conviction until her books and ideas become imprinted into his subconscious. These ideas were so acute that the way viewed himself and things around him changed overtime. When Ayn Rand visits the campus, the narrator’s admiration for her is completely shattered when he witnesses her intimidating and harsh behaviour. He later, however, carries on with the same cruelty as is shown by Ayn Rand in his own persona which changes his form of writing Tobias Wolff’s book as