This Boys Life Tobias Wolff Analysis

Throughout Tobias Wolff’s memoir This Boys Life, the character Jack is continuously lying to himself about his identity. His characteristic of escaping reality through his imagination is a reoccurring theme in A Boy’s Life. The lies commence in the letters which he sends to his pen pal, Alice. In these letters he describes himself as “the owner of a palomino horse named Smiley who shared [his] encounters with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and packs of coyotes on [his] father’s ranch, the Lazy B. When [he] wasn’t busy on the ranch, [he] raised German shepherds and played for several athletic teams” (Wolff 13). The lies continue with his letters to Hill and when Jack pretends to be an “A” student and lies to his brother. Jack desires and is desperate

As a result, Jack retreats into his imagination to be all of things he wishes he was. When Jack forges his letter of support for prep school, he “believed in it more than [he] believed in the facts arrayed against it” (Wolff 213). Although he is not adequate for prep school, he fantasizes that he is an exemplary student while he wrote the recommendation letter talking about his prodigious qualities. Not only does Jack lie often, but he also convinces himself that the lies he claims are the truth. An instance of Jack convincing himself that his lies are the truth is shown when Jack is sent to the principal’s office and he says, “The more I insisted on [my innocence] the angrier he got, and the angrier he got the more impossible it was for me to believe that I deserved such anger” (Wolff 78). Jack states, “It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed I was an Eagle Scout,” (Wolff