Old School : Exploring some of the Essential Questions
Directions: Select a significant and dense passage from chapters 4-6. Make sure that it is a passage that you can closely analyze. Consider its relevance to one of the essential questions listed below.
Essential question #1: How is identity linked to storytelling? If we are authors of our own lives, how do the narratives we create about ourselves influence our behavior, our attitudes, and our actions? How do these stories help us to make meaning out of our experiences and to make choices that steer the directions of our lives?
Essential question #2: Evaluate the belief in meritocracy. Do we totally earn our own accomplishments and failures? How responsible are we for the honors bestowed upon us? How much are we to blame for our failures? Are we also responsible for the happiness and success of others? If we have experienced success, are we obligated to share that success with others who have not earned it? Can a belief in meritocracy coexist with a belief in the greater good?
Essential question #3: How do we know if a piece of writing is good? What makes writing powerful, effective, interesting, or worth reading? If the author intends one meaning but the reader interprets the text to mean something very different, how should we make sense of those discrepancies?
Essential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
Essential question #5: What impressions can you draw about the characters and the professional writers from the glimpses into their work that the narrator provides? How does their writing compare to the details of their lives?
Essential question #6: What does it mean to discover one’s voice? How original are our voices? How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual? What is the difference between influence, imitation, and plagiarism?
Essential question #7: Notice continual references to acting, role-playing, performance and theater. How does this motif help us understand the characters, the school, and some larger themes in the book? To what extent does this notion of performance become internalized? Is our identity simply an internalization of the roles we play? Are we something more than that?
In your blog post be sure to do the following:
1. Center your discussion around the ANALYSIS of one particularly dense passage that you believe connects to one of the questions above.
2. Articulate a claim that clearly designates a stance or an interpretation about the passage and the essential question.
3. Closely analyze the passage. The majority of your post should center on analysis and examining specific textual details that contribute to the overall meaning of the passage. Consider diction, figurative language, repetition, syntax or any other devices that apply.
4. You can make larger connections to other parts of the text. However, we want to see an in-depth analysis of one passage. Doing this will help prepare you for your paper when we come back from break.
5. Write about 300 words and proofread.
6. One you have finished writing your post, get involved in at least two other online conversations. Be sure to use respectful language! Here are some things you can write in your response:
a. Agree or disagree and use something in the text to develop your response.
b. Comment on someone’s post that makes you notice something that you didn’t think of before. Talk about what this person’s post helped you to see.
c. Make connections to other aspects of the text that might develop someone else’s idea further.
d. Offer an alternate way of interpreting the text that someone discussed in his or her post.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDanielle Harrington 12/23/14
ReplyDeleteOld School essential ?’s block 8
Essential Question #7: Notice continual references to acting, role-playing, performance and theater. How does this motif help us understand the characters, the school, and some larger themes in the book? To what extent does this notion of performance become internalized? Is our identity simply an internalization of the roles we play? Are we something more than that?
Quote: “By now I’d been absorbed so far into my performance...No other boy in my class would be going there.” (Old School page 109)
This quote has many references to acting, this shows a lot about the Narrator’s character. He explains that his “mask” or his alter ego has consumed him and he doesn’t even realize when he is doing it because it comes so naturally to him. He says “By now I’d been absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally.” In order for that to consume him he must have been doing it for such a long time that it became normal to him. He really doesn’t want people knowing who he really is, although I feel that he doesn’t even know who he is because his image is warped by his acting.
The Narrator also says “ In the first couple of years there’d been some spirit of play in creating the part, refining it, watching it pass… All that was gone.” He doesn’t like playing the part anymore, at first it was for him because of the idea of starting over and being able to create a new “Him” but now all of those feelings are gone and he wants to be “free”. He can’t be free though because of the comfort of the acting and how hard it is to actually break the acting streak. He is truly afraid to show the people in the school who he really is. He shows later on when he steals the girl’s story so he could “show everyone who he really is” But it’s not who he is because it wasn’t his story.
The fact that this boy would go through so much just to hide small things shows how judgmental the school would be if they found out about him. He didn’t want people to treat him differently and he went through great lengths so that wouldn’t happen. The main question is if the narrator can hide his identity without even thinking about it, couldn’t the other boys? What if the other characters are hiding certain things because they don’t want to be judged.
The Narrator’s way of getting out of his role was to go to columbia because he thinks no one else from his school would be going there. But just because he isn’t around people from his school doesn’t mean he will stop acting. It’s already natural to him so how will he be able to just stop when he wants. If he doesn’t want to be treated differently than he won’t give up the role, this shows how much his acting and building a new character has affected him.
I was intrigued by the idea of the other boys hiding their identities; I had never thought of it that way. Although the text alludes to this when his roommate doesn't tell the narrator about his heritage, Do you think the narrator realizes that others could be acting? I also liked your idea of the mask. It reminded me of Othello and how Iago changed his personality to entice others.
DeleteI completely agree with what Danielle is responding to in the question. Something that makes me uneasy is the fact that the narrator is so conscious of the persona he is portraying to the rest of his school, and that he is so aware of the bad choices he is making. I also think that if he is doing all this acting, his fellow "friends" are doing so as well, all the charactors in this play don't know an honest thing about eachother.
DeleteI really liked how you talked about him wanting to become free from his lies, and just wanting to come clean. I think that's also how he felt about his writing that his writing wasn't free, because of his lies.
DeleteI agree with you stating that it wasn't his story, because he didn't live that life, nobody he knew, he didn't have to hide something nobody else knew, yet he did anyway.
I agree with you that the author has come to realize that he has been performing for the majority of the time that he has been at the school. “When I caught myself in the act now I felt embarrassed” (Wolff 109). The narrator seems to know that he has been making up a fabricated identity of a sort, and when he notices this he is somewhat ashamed. I liked how you described that this causes him to come to the conclusion that he has been lying to himself and “acting” the entire time. As you mentioned, he talks about how he chose Columbia because he can become someone new without the outside influence of people from his school. I liked how you related the narrator's issues back to the school and I thought that was an interesting way of looking at the narrator's identity crisis.
Delete“What the hell, let’s see how it felt to write it… Anyone who read this story would know who I was” (Wolff 126-127).
ReplyDeleteEssential Question #6
In this passage, the narrator believes he has finally found his voice through his writing. I do not believe that the author has truly found his voice yet. Discovering one’s voice is to fully understand our character and identify with it truthfully. Another aspect to this is figuring out how to share our voices with others. Someone’s voice should be original and reflect their true character, but sometimes, as the narrator does, we believe that we find our voices by deciding how we would like to be seen by others. The narrator is very caught up in protecting his privacy because he worries about what the other boys will think of him. He believes his past will be detrimental to his social and academic success. Even his newfound voice that he establishes after reading “Summer Dance” is clearly not original even though he believes it is.
Although the narrator is able to accept who he is more clearly after reading “Summer Dance,” he entirely plagiarizes the writing and passes it off as his own work. He is able to find his voice in the sense that he has realized who he really is, however by taking someone else’s work and trying to say it is his original thought/idea/identity really means that he is still attempting to find out who he is. The narrator simply relies on the girl who wrote “Summer Dance” to provide a parallel example for his life, but he obviously does not come to the conclusion that this is his “voice” without reading this story.
Influence seems to serve the purpose of planting an idea or a seed in someones mind that will inspire them or make them think differently. Imitation is more directly an idea to mimic what someone else has done in order to be more like them. The narrator is not really imitating the girl who wrote “Summer Dance”, since he finds himself to share many traits with the character Ruth. He takes this story and accepts Ruth’s personality as his own true identity, and takes lines out of the story and changes names of characters. By plagiarizing “Summer Dance”, the narrator takes the next step to finding his voice, but he is still putting on a bit of an act since he didn’t come up with this idea and therefore has not truly discovered his own original voice.
I completely agree with you! I feel as if the narrator doesn't know who he is yet and he is too afraid to find out. To sit down and write who he really is would be so emotional and raw and that is something that would be too hard for him. By writing who he is he would be laying all of his cards down on the table but he doesn't because he is too afraid so he uses the girl's story. I feel that he used her story because he found comfort in knowing that someone has gone through similar things as him which he used as a scapegoat to "show his identity".
DeleteI agree with you, the narrator fools himself in saying that the story represents his voice; I especially liked how you mentioned how one can only identify their voice "truthfully”. Since he plagiarized the writing, he is completely missing the point of having an "original" character. Also, this post really helped me to see that him plagiarizing represented his failed attempt at finding out who he was, it really made me think that he would keep "attempting" to do so. Although his first big attempt eventually gets him in trouble, it allows hope in the reader that next time his attempt will work and wont get him into a mess. This passage also enables the reader to observe the narrators hesitation to plagiarizing the piece of writing, "The sentence did not want to be written," (Wolff 126). This shows that the narrator does have it in him to not be influenced to do the wrong thing.
DeleteI agree with you, the narrator doesn't really know who he is. He uses the story to hide behind because it really isn't his story, but he is so caught up in the contest, and his emotions and the pressure from his teachers and himself cause him to act on something he should know is wrong. I think his judgement is clouded, and even after he leaves the school he still doesn't know who he is, which causes himself to still be unsure of himself. He can't find his originality because he doesn't know who he is.
DeleteI completely agree with Olivia’s comment on how the narrator can actually do the right thing. After he plagiarized thats when I think he finally realized that he can’t live his life thinking like the way the person in the story does. It was refreshing for him to get out in the real world without all the rich kids and to learn how to deal with life. He clearly ended up doing the right thing for his case in the end since he seemed to enjoy his time serving in the military and then after that creating a family for himself. The plagiarism was a turning point in his life, a way for him to forget the past and learn to take care of himself.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteComing to a (Fountain)Head
ReplyDelete(Kinda ties in to Question #4)
“The Fountainhead made me alert to the smallest surrenders of will...The old guy, smiling to himself, fingers laced across his stomach, stared past me into the street.” (Wolff, 70)
This is, as I see it, the apex of the narrator’s pent up emotions. Obviously, throughout these three chapters, he is struggling with the confinement of his emotions in order to appease his peers. He soon found comfort in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. This paragraph is rich with subtle details that help portray the miserable emotions the narrator tries to hide.
The first example of these emotions occurs when he says: ”I stopped by the window and stared at him, hoping he’d sense my rage and disgust.” What makes this quote rich with subtlety is the hypocrisy of the whole thing. The narrator is the one feeling the pressure of his peers and superiors, and the shame and humiliation of being stamped as Jewish, and yet he acts like he’s the one pressuring the shoe salesman. What I hear in this quote is fear. Fear that the narrator himself is the shoe salesman, fear that he is allowing the pressure of his faith to build, and the fear that he will eventually be revealed. His only option, in his mind at least, is to deny. Deny, and hide The Fountainhead and it’s idea of self-preservation and self-success. This is how he copes with his pent up emotions.
Another example of these emotions shows up when the narrator says: “But he never looked my way. He continued to chat up with his customer…” The narrator yet again connects to the shoe salesman. Imagine the customer as the narrator’s peers. They continue to chat with the narrator, blissfully unaware of his troubles. And the narrator’s response is all the same. Nothing’s wrong; I’m fine. Even the simple image of the shoe salesman looking up towards the customer has subtlety. Looking up implies that you are below the person above you. That you are weaker; that you conform to them, and not the other way around. The narrator is below, looking up to those stronger than him; those more open than him. The Fountainhead implies that there should be no one person better than another. If everyone betters themselves, no one person should be better than another. There shouldn’t even be a comparison between two people. And yet outside the shoe store window, peering in, staring with “rage and disgust,” are the emotions that continue to brew. The emotions that hold him below the customer; The emotions that could break everything he’s worked for. He nevers turns to the window, and continues to chat away, quite possibly forever. Just like the salesman.
In the end, we have yet to know how these lurking emotions will affect the narrator, how his peers will respond, or how his writing will be affected. But no one can deny that they’re there, and no one can deny that the narrator is hiding behind The Fountainhead, while his emotions begin to come to a head.
I thought it was really cool that you stated fear as being a driving force to what the narrator says. I had never really thought of it that way. Originally, I saw it as the narrator being full of himself and acting as Roark to fill the hole in his identity, but what you said gives a deeper meaning to what's going on in his head.
DeleteI agree with Melissa on your point of fear. It is indeed a powerful force, and that really makes me think of a quote from that passage that I had bookmarked, "/Fool! Men were born to soar, and you have chosen to kneel!/" I had this marked just because I quite like the notion it implied (seizing opportunity, not being submissive, etc.), but when you bring the idea of fear into play you can also twist that into something a bit darker. You could go as far as to say that this is subconscious chastising his conscious, metaphorically speaking.
DeleteIdentity Theft
ReplyDeleteLydia Kerchner
“Everything’s okay… What the hell - let’s see how it felt to write it.” ( Wolff 125-126)
Through out the book the narrator has read and written many pieces, usually connecting with the author or the characters;this time he feels that this character embodies him. After trying for hours to come up with an original story to present to the author he worships, Hemingway. He finds inspiration and a little more, in an article by some girl in a neighbouring school.
I believe that the narrator is afraid to put himself out there and because of that he chooses the life of this girl to become his own. He even says “from the very first sentence was staring (himself) in the face” which shows that he truly believes that this girl’s life is his own. The girl’s story is similar to his life but instead of basing an original piece on her story he copies it completely, becoming her.
He also connects with the unpretentious quality of the story ;how the character rode a bus and took a typing class. After talking to Ayn Rand and realizing the humble nature of Hemingway's books, drives a want to write something humble. He recognizes the simplicity of her story and the similarity to his very own life and decides to plagiarize it. He might also be afraid of rejection from his favourite author because he sees the parallels between the girls work and Hemingway’s he decides to copy it. Then if he loses he can just blame it on an author he never even knew and if he wins he can praise the likeness to his own life.
I like how you talked about his fear of rejection, and I completely agree. To me, everything he's done in this book has been out of fear of rejection. Also, the idea of blaming it on the girl he copied gives him a false safety net which I think we talked about in class (maybe? I can't really remember).
DeleteWhat I like is how you mentioned humility, because the story the narrator puts out there is definitely humbling for him. It feels like a breath of fresh air for us to see him taking himself down a rung when we just recently saw him acting all high and mighty after reading and rereading The Fountainhead.
DeleteI agree with Lydia. The narrator is to afraid to put himself out there to society, so he uses this girls story as a shield to protect himself. At the same time, he isn't thinking about the consequences for his actions, all because he is so desperate to meet Hemmingway. This all ties into what we have been talking about, fear of rejection
DeleteEssential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
ReplyDelete“This, I decided, this sadistic dullness...hanging from his neck.”-Page 69-70
The fact that so many different authors and books influence the narrator is slightly worrisome on one hand, but in another light the narrator is young, he doesn’t know who he is and everything about the school and the time period he is living in is pushing him to keep his life a secret. The narrator does not fit in at his school, although he is there on a scholarship and the school is seen as a meritocracy, he feels the need to keep that part of himself a secret. By embodying Roark the narrator puts himself above all his classmates without having to talk about his economic situation.
After reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead the narrator finds himself to be superior to anyone who gives in to society, or “surrender of will”. Before reading The Fountainhead the narrator was portrayed as slightly apathetic, but he was in no way as cruel and arrogant. The narrators grandparents were doing everything to make sure he was happy and comfortable staying with them and the narrator was despising them for caring. He did anything he could to get away from them.
He escaped his loving grandparents by taking the bus into Baltimore. There he was disgusted by everyone and everything except “...the drunkards and bums who’d at least had the guts not to buy into the sham.” When the author uses the word “sham”, I think of it as him talking about society and the “ideal america”, that was such a big thing during the 50s and 60s. This passage of Old School makes me think of Ginsbergs’ writing. The anger the narrator has, while not as passionate as Ginsberg is similar.
Another thing that stuck out was when the narrator was criticizing uniformity. It made me think back to the fire that happened in chapter two, page 35, “We dressed so much alike that the inflections we did allow ourselves...were probably invisible to an outsider. Our clothes...all this marked us like tribal tattoos.” This quote from chapter two is very different from a quote from chapter four, “The businessmen struck me as especially pathetic...each with some laughable flag of individuality hanging from his neck.”
It’s interesting to see the change in perspective. The fact that the narrator is so appalled by this “uniformity” shows that he’s actually disgusted in what he has become/is becoming. This sacred school that he pretends to adore is actually his biggest enemy. This thing that is the sole reason for all his pretending. We see many examples of the narrator smiting the school. In chapter one, page 23, he refers to it as “the snob factory upstairs.” Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead pushed his feeling of self loathing to the surface.
It is upsetting how the author does not see himself for who he is. He is extremely insecure, and I agree with every observation Rosa made. Arguably his character molding can be good for him to find what works and what he likes, but can also be bad because that is not really what he is getting from it. Rosa made me realize how his constant changing may not be so bad. I guess once he finds what he is comfortable with he will stop his search for different lives and characters. I also like how Rosa compares the anger the narrator has to Ginsbergs’. The point Rosa has about the time is also very valid. This time period is another factor in the narrator’s search for a new identity.
DeleteI definitely agree with Rosa's statements about his disgust and how it changes and morphs as he picks up different authors, but i also think we should take into account the fact that our narrator is a teenager. teenagers are infamous for their shifting standpoints, so i think that Rosa makes a great point about his instability towards his actions depending on his most recent read. I do also think that we should acknowledge the fact that his mental flip flopping is inevitable hes is a teenager with an enormous secret to keep but hes also under so much pressure to keep his scholarship. The idea of a meritocracy has to be extremely strenuous on our narrator, hes here only because of his educational prowess and if he slips up hes gone. i think he might use these alter egos to take the wight off of himself and all of his responsibilities.
DeleteI absolutely agree with what Rosa said regarding his disgust for his school, and I liked how Gus brought up his age. I think we tend to forget that the narrator is fairly close to our age and he is still really young. The outside world is pretty scary and uncertain, but the uncertainty of who we are can be even more frightening. In my opinion, I feel like that narrator's disgust is mostly out of fear that he might become what he hates. Because he has put such a veil over who he is, he doesn't know himself anymore and that's scary. What if he is a snob? What if he is destined to be a shoe salesman? All of these questions with added extra emotions leads to him burying himself deeper and hiding more
DeleteFraud
ReplyDeleteEssential Question #1
“By now I’d absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally... there was more to me than people knew!” (109 Wolff).
The narrator is feeling how detached he is from his identity in his life and in his writing. He has become so involved in performing roles socially and on paper that he has lost sight of his true self. He mentions he had become so consumed that things became unfamiliar and he himself can not tell what is pure. The narrator does add that he never forgot he was performing. That is interesting because he has motivation and a reputation to uphold, but would he be extremely different if he was not performing? Would the choices he made so far be different? Of course. He tries to convince himself he has never lied in his writing although that is all he does. He lies to himself more than anyone and that is where his problem is.
He ends this paragraph with “there was more to me than people knew!”. The narrator gets angry when people are oblivious to his background and hardships, but they have no understanding because he hides himself. He does not tell people he is Jewish, and he does not allow people to know he is on a scholarship. He is using all of his energy to cover these things and almost telling himself they are not real. At this school, he can be whoever he wants but there is a fine line. Where is the line for too much change, and where is the line where it is lies and just plain fake? He latched onto the cocky character Roark and now he’s into Hemingway who writes realistically and is very modest. The narrator continually changes his writing voice and the way he looks at and judges the world. He should be looking at it through eyes of his experiences. However, his experiences have made him avoid facing these realities at all costs.
The narrator’s attitude is that he is free at this school, but he is far from free. He is being chained down by his experiences. Every move he makes is dictated by his past life. This is sad but it is simply a fact. No matter what school he attends he will still live with the fear of returning home. If he took pride in his scholarship and confided in people about his family would he be healthier? It’s interesting how the narrator is first telling us how much is absorbed by his fake character then is bothered at the end at how much people do not know about him. The narrator is telling his story the way he thinks is best for him and makes decisions that he believes are the roads he wants to take, but could that be his downfall? Easily.
I agree completely with what Maddie has to say about the narrator. Detached was the perfect word to describe his behavior throughout the book. We read on grudgingly wanting so badly for the narrator to form a real relationship with us as well as the other characters in the book, but from what it seems he is incapable, he has played the role for too long. I think that is why I felt such a resounding disappointment when he submitted the girls story, because he had played the part of Roark, and it was now his turn to be himself, and he couldn't.
DeleteI feel that Maddie is exact in her explanation of the narrator's feeling of the school. He's been acting for so long that he has convinced himself that he has freedom at the school. He constantly monitors himself and does not let his true feelings to come out. We have seen the inner workings of his mind, at times they are cynical but there is a certain innocence and obliviousness to what is happening around him. He has such an insightful mind but his need to be accepted overshadows that. He has become so fake, this is true. Your comment about his downfall in interesting, it makes me consider his failure as the ultimate culmination of his lies. Maybe he needs to fall, to fail, in order to truly accept who he is. Inside and out.
DeleteI agree with all of what Maddie has said here, but the part that really stood out to me and was an idea that I too had thought about was that his writing is nothing but lies. He becomes this whole other person and tries to become them, inside and outside of his writing. Yes, it is true that the narrator says that there is more to him then people may think. But in actuality the reason that people don't know more is because the narrator conceals his true self and his past in order to avoid being different then the rest. This post could bring up a conflict of whether or not the author wants his true identity to be revealed.
DeleteI think Maddie was absolutely right when she emphasized the narrator’s tendency to conceal some of his majorly defining characteristics, however I had an additional interpretation as to why he then stated, “...there was more to me than people knew!” (109, Wolff). So, although I do agree that he sometimes got frustrated at other people’s unawareness for his hardships, I also thought that this little outburst could have another underlying meaning. Before saying this, the schoolboy had been romanticizing the thrill of “doubleness,” so I had first read his subsequent exclamation as victorious. It was as if he were congratulating himself on being so cunning and mysterious. I also could then see how this phrase could then fade away into a more mournful cry. Ultimately, his initial eagerness at tricking people into thinking he is someone who he is not soon bled into a sadness for exactly the same reason. In a way this line was a perfect transition, both within the text and within his mind, going from controlling his character to being controlled by his character.
Delete-Sarah Kowaleski
Maddie I agree with you 100%. You brought up a very interesting point that I never thought of. You mentioned how the narrator feels like he is free at the school. In reality, the narrator is not free at all. Like you said, he is being chained down. He has to spend all his time making sure he does not blow his cover. If he says one wrong thing, that could ruin everything. This makes the narrator be the farthest away from free he could possibly be. In order to be truly free, the narrator would have to stop performing. He would have to stop acting a person that is not actually there. Maddie, I really liked how you brought up this point,
DeletePretending with a Purpose
ReplyDeleteEssential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
I think that our narrator is not weak but pliable, or flexible. I also think our narrator is writing for himself, though he may be writing to try and win competitions and see his idols, he's also expressing himself. he's not writing for others he’s writing to express himself and accomplish a sense of closure in his identity. The narrator copied the girl from the magazines story because he felt himself in it, he saw this character's desperation and depravity and he empathized with her, he copied this story to put his life on paper to make it tangible. If he can hold his life right in front of him and accept it then hes one step further to being content with himself. The narrator's way of learning to accept himself is truly strong-willed.
Making himself into Roark was an obvious testament to what he desires to be. Roark an architect that is hated, and scorned all for doing what is correct. Roark resents this idea of trading modernization for the human standard of living. I think our narrator sees himself and what he wants to be in Roark, and hes attracted to it. This idea of doing superb work that suits you, yet at the same time better the common person is tantalizing to him. But then there is Dominique, this woman who takes no prisoners in the pursuit of finding an adversary or equal. He wants to put his past, and his heritage behind him and toss people aside when hes done with them. He adores Dominiques steely demeanor and he wishes he could do that but he knows if anyone found out about who he really was hed be shut down.
I think he sees the interactions between Dominique and Roark and he models himself after these two, he talks about the letter he sent to Rain and says “every phrase glowed with stupidity, made even more garish by the dead silence of its reception” (Wolfe 65). He wants Rain and its extremely obvious when he talks about the semi-vulgar things they've done but she doesn't want him and him solely, as after they dance and get split up shes making out with some boy across the room.He thinks that Rain is waiting for somebody to challenge her and hes already been tossed aside in her wild search for an equal, so he idolizes Roark because thats how it worked out in The Fountain Head.
The narrator is a truly astounding character who adapts to his situation using these alternate personas made by authors, but also uses them as tool for self betterment. I think that this character has a specific skill set of acting, and performing and he uses these extremely well to get what he wants out of life, even if he's not comfortable with who he is now.
I agree with you Gus that the author is trying to express himself when he writes even though we may think that he is just trying to win competitions. I never thought of it this way before, this helped me to realize that this book is not merely about victory its also about the character. I think that its not just the Fountainhead that may change his view on things but in my opinion its the author. Ayn Rand mentions that: "let me tell you what your value derives from. It does not derive from the self sacrifice demanded by some party, or state, or from the church of some ludicrous...."(Pg 82-83) . This shows the effect that Ayn Rand has on the author. But I think that this quote kind of backs up your idea of pliability because we see he is getting this inflow of information from a well-known author and whether he is going to work with it or fall apart from this "news". Also I don't think that it ever said in the book that that is how it worked for Roarke, but maybe I'm wrong.
DeleteI think another way that you could have interpreted this is by talking about the connections that Rain and the author share before anything happened. Because isn't that how Dominique and Roarke were getting along? And then you could refer and to the Fountainhead. Overall, good job!!!
Gus, I really liked what you said about him writing to “find closure.” I think that’s definitely a reason why he writes. I think him winning competitions and being good at it comes second. The narrator thinks that the the girls story is just like him, when in reality he’s trying to convince himself it is just to find some type of closure. He does it to be content with himself even though he hasn't fully opened and found the real him. He just keeps layering piece by piece over himself to the point where he has lost any sort of identity completely.
DeleteMarina Angelopoulos
ReplyDeleteThe Show Goes On
“It kind of got on my nerves, actually -- all that Ubermensch stuff.”
“The German word shut me up. Our history master used it often -- too often, really, with excessive pleasure in his accent -- to describe Nazi ideology… I became instantly conscious of his Jewishness, and all the more so because he kept it to himself… I didn’t want to provoke them by pushing a view that he identified with German murderers. Our balance was fragile enough anyway, with so many complications of ambition and envy and pretense.” pg 72
Ubermensch: “Overman, Overhuman, Superhuman, Superman, Ultra-Human.”
Bill slipped. Or maybe it was intentional. Maybe he was making a point. Maybe the word didn’t hold the same correlation between himself and the narrator. But how could it not? One word choice had struck a nerve in the narrator, and there was no going back. That blatant remark! How could Bill say such a thing? Knowing -- oh wait, thats right, how could Bill have known? The narrator had never been honest. He had always been acting, just a liar behind a mask.
This passage is another example of the narrator’s suppressed feelings towards his religion and his longing to reveal who he really is. This passage sparks the narrator’s growing resentment and desire to confess in the later chapters. The desire to take off the mask, and be real, be honest. It also begins to turn him off from Ayn Rand. The narrator would have wanted to stand up and shout to Bill, tell him how insensitive he was being, but he internalizes his feelings yet again not wanting to break their “fragile” balance. The narrator after four years with Bill is still unable to form a real relationship with him. The notion that they have some kind of balance is absurd. “He knew I’d caught on to his Jewishness, but he wasn’t aware of mine, such as it was.” There cannot be balance between the two of them when the narrator knows the missing piece to Bill’s puzzle, and Bill is left in the dark.
The tone of the beginning statements about the history teacher is dripping with pent up anger and annoyance. The strategically placed pauses with use of the word “pleasure” allow you to almost picture the narrator’s face riled up with disgust. The tone shifts when the narrator starts to talk about Bill, moving to words like “balance” “tenderness” and “kindred”.The author uses these rants that the narrator has to himself to deepen the story. Most of the book is developed not through conversation between two individuals, but the conversations that the narrator has with himself, and this one is just one of many where the narrator internalizes his feelings, thoughts, and passions to keep up his facade. The show must always go on.
(essential question #7)
I agree with what Marina has said about Bill and the narrator's consciousness about what Bill's true feelings are. They are alike in many ways. You almost think that they could be such good confidantes, a circuit through which they can tell their secrets. But their inner self forbids this, they must keep up their act. The narrator has lost an opportunity to let go of all the anger and hate that he has held for so many years. And in this, he also loses the chance to make a friend, someone who he can rely on and truly trust. Their walls are strong and neither has the courage to bring them down. So they coexist in stony silence, never to experience the freedom of brotherhood.
Delete
ReplyDeleteEssential Question 5
“Word by word i gave it all away. I changed Ruth’s first name to mine,... I didn’t have a lot of adjusting to do. These thoughts were my thoughts, this life my own.” (Wolff 126)
This was a quote from the narrator. He needed a story to submit because his favorite author, Hemingway, was coming to his school. The narrator could not think of anything himself so to solve this problem, he stole a story that a young woman from an all girls school wrote. The narrator believed that he was using this story to show who he actually is when in reality, this story is completely someone elses work. I believe that the narrator is too afraid to show his true identity.
The narrator used this story because this is the closest to his real life that he has ever shown. “...this life my own.” This shows how the narrator is so brainwashed by how he thinks this is his life. He truly believes that he is opening up and this is him. The narrator believes this stolen story reflects details of his life. However, it does not because these ideas are stolen and not his. I think that the narrator is afraid. He is afraid to open up. I believe he feels this way because this is his only shot.
The narrator is not like these other boys. The other boys are very wealthy, if something at this school goes wrong for them, they will have something to fall back on. In the narrator’s case, it is not like this at all. He is at the school on scholarship so this is his only chance. He does not want to give too much of who he really is away because he does not want to screw this up. This is why he chooses someone elses story. He thinks he is telling his own because it is very similar to his own life but he feels safer with it because if someone were to question him about it, he can deny that this is actually him. You see this in other parts of the text. For example, when the narrator gets in trouble for whistling the Nazi Marching Song right in front of Gershon. The narrator had no idea what he was humming. He could have cleared the whole situation up by simply letting Gershon know that his relatives are Jewish. However. since the narrator is too scared to let go of his identity, he chooses not to.
DeleteI agree with you Erin, that the author is too afraid to let go of his identity, this is probably a hard time for him too, considering that his favorite author would be reading one of his works, so he does not want to mess up. I think he is afraid that people will not accept the person he truly is, with him pretending to be someone he is not, it gives him a sense of security and sureness that if he messes up, it would not be his own personality that has messed up, but the created identity.
I agree with you Erin. I thought it was good that you talked about how the narrator is trying really hard not to screw anything up because it may be his only chance to start fresh. Also I liked that you related his issues with hiding his identity back to when he is whistling the Nazi song, because it really shows how his deception is affecting others around him. The narrator definitely knows that he has not been truthful about his identity, but he doesn’t really care because he knows that he has no safety net of money or family connections to fall back on if something goes wrong.
DeleteI agree with Erin. I think this act by the narrator is just another example of him stealing others lives and ideologies. The only difference is that this time it's not only a life style, but an entire story. Although this story is not his, he might be able to relate to it, but the issue is there is no way for us, the readers, to know if it's really him or not. The narrator has given us close to no information about his real life. There is no way of knowing who he is. The narrator probably relates to minor details, like the way the character is so desperate for cigarettes, "I hope nobody saw me pick up the cigarette butt off the sidewalk." or how she is so embarrassed of her roots she spends time with people she doesn't even see as friends. I think although the narrator claims this story is him, he still has a lot of searching to do.
DeleteI agree with what you said about how he is too afraid to show his true identity. I also liked how you used the word "brainwashed" to describe the narrator, It shows how alike everyone in the school really is and how that was believed to have been the "right way". It makes you question whether the other kids are "brainwashed" as well due to the lack of diversity and how secluded the school is from the real world. Even though it isn't as big of a deal to them, maybe the reason the author is so afraid to admit who he is, is because the rich kids have also been "brainwashed" to think that being a Jewish boy on scholarship is a bad and strange thing because they don't often have to encounter others like that.
DeleteMegan Mausert
ReplyDeleteForked Tongue, Page 118
“His question was serious, the interest behind it wearily intimate, undefended….In some murky way I recognized my own impatience to tear off the mask, and it spooked me”
In this passage, the narrator has just had a brief conversation with his roommate in which he was asked about how his piece of writing was going. This isn’t the first time however it is one of the important times that he wants to break down his walls and just be honest. While it is a small thing (that he actually hasn’t done any work towards his paper) it signifies something else, something bigger. This passage relates to role playing and essential question #7. The author himself references the role he plays, and wanting to just let go of it all and let up on the act. When the narrator is thinking “In some murky way I recognized my own impatience to tear off the mask, and it spooked me.” These lines show that the author is aware of the role he is playing. He compares it to a mask, something that can be taken off and put back on. He is impatient and anxious and he wants to take off this mask, but at the same time the thought terrifies him. He is more than just worried, he is ”spooked” like going through a haunted house on Halloween. I think this line relates to that, although it may seem a strange connection. The thought that makes the narrator impatient, and want to come clean, is that he knows that once the scary part is over, he will be free. However, what spooks him is what is inside of the house and what he must go through to get out and to get that freedom. There is also a lingering thought, will he ever be able to find out? While he says he is “so wrung out myself, so tired of all this…” he cannot physically bring himself to be honest, because he is afraid. I believe that the first line shows that our identity is not only the roles we play. As much as the narrator tries to act like he is like the others, inside he knows that this is not true. I believe that the narrator however is definitely unsure of who he is and his exact identity, but he knows for a fact that it is not the same as the role he is playing.
I also believe that his roommate, Bill may play a part in reminding him of his real identity. Not only because of the fact that he is also Jewish but also because the narrator has spent so long with him. The narrator knows that there could’ve been a chance for a real friendship. Also on page 118 and then on page 117 the narrator says this “I still felt the possibility and it troubled me that we had always let it slip” and then “We were farther from being friends then on our first day.” If there is anyone that the narrator feels he may be open with, it would be Bill and I think that fact has kept him from being the friend he wants. This shows the extent the narrator is willing to go, to keep up his performance. He knows that if he were to stop playing the role, then he could come clean to Bill, tell him everything and they may even finally become friends or something close. He sacrifices this chance for the sake of not being able to stop acting. He is constantly thinking things out, exhausting himself and working hard. In my opinion, this shows that there is more to him than just the role he plays, he is intricate which makes it hard for us to understand him, as well as for him to understand. But, as hard as the author tries he cannot pretend forever, and he knows it which is why he wants to go to Columbia. He wants to start new and maybe start to figure out and be who he really is. While I believe that the roles we play do not completely become our identity, I do think that parts of it do. The narrator may never completely figure out who he is because he is stuck in his world of acting and pretending. He may always be a mix of who he really is and who he is pretending to be.
I think Megan did very well in explaining the authors language and diction and tearing apart the word choices. My favorite being the halloween reference, very witty. I also like that her blog makes us question what we know about the narrator if he doesn't even know fully who he is. It makes us question how we feel about him personally. Are we supposed to like him? Is it the authors intention to make us think and question who we are because of his actions? Would we do the same in his position? I know that I thought that the narrator was weak and disappointing. I'm not saying this with Randism in mind, I just for one wanted him to finally break and be real and true and maybe have a shot of happiness. I hope that in his position I wouldn't do the same, that I could admit to who I was and work with it. But the narrator is surprisingly almost painfully human, and so am I, so are we. Can I really say that I wouldn't do the same? Maybe, maybe not.
DeleteMelissa Schaefer
ReplyDeleteEssential question #6: What does it mean to discover one’s voice? How original are our voices? How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual? What is the difference between influence, imitation, and plagiarism?
“I skipped to the next…….But otherwise, it needed no correction. It was done. Anyone who read this story would know who I was” (Wolff 122-127).
We’d like to think that our voices are completely original and solely ours, but that is not the case. In my opinion, one’s true voice is a mixture of all that is around them. It comes from anywhere, music, books, movies, past experiences, etc. All of these outside factors develope who we are in public and who we are in private. Because of the way he has portrayed himself for so long, the narrator tries to find his voice. This is because, whether he realized it or not, he never had is own voice.
So naturally, he plagiarizes a story he found from an all girls’ school newspaper and suddenly he has his own mind! During this passage, the reader finally sees how divided the narrator has become. There were always two sides; the actor who played his role in school and the part of him that wants to come through and be accepted. For the longest time, the actor was the stronger of the two. Then he reads “Summer Dance” and it all changes. The reader can easily tell through the narrator’s language that he is captivated. He slowly tells us what he’s reading, almost as if he’s pleading for us to be captivated with him. “She rides the bus across the city-Columbus-and walks home” (Wolff 122). He didn’t have to tell us which city it was or that she went home by bus, but it was a little detail that captured his attention. He continues to read us the story of a girl named Ruth in a very steady manner, careful not to lose us in any sort of rambling. Then he finishes and it hits him hard. Now he sees what he’s been doing all of this time. “From the very first sentence I was looking myself in the face” (Wolff 125). The lying, the acting, the hiding, everything comes full circle and smacks him in the face.There’s a sudden drive to show who he is and fast. After reading it, you can see the narrator breaking free from the invisible chains that he has locked himself in. He starts to explode and ramble things like “the typing class, the bus, the apartment; all mine.” (Wolff 125). It’s almost like he can’t contain it anymore so in a blurry state he just starts typing the story. This side of him is tired of waiting and wants the truth out, whether he’s know the consequences or not.
However, the story was written for Ruth, not the narrator. Just because he connects with what it’s about does not in any way justify his actions of calling it his. This is plagiarism, not admiration, not imitation. What he did was purely to continue lying and hiding himself from his peers. Now, if he had read this story and thought “Maybe I’ll come out with my own story like this girl did with hers” that would be completely different. Clearly he was inspired by the story, so if he took that inspiration and wrote his own, he would be one step closer to his voice. The sad part is that he thinks he has locked himself in a certain social role that he can’t get out of.
By hiding who he truly is, the narrator has stopped himself from developing his identity. Identity isn’t something that can be multi-tasked successfully. If you pretend to be something you’re not, you will never find out who you really are. Our identity is like a meal that is difficult to cook. The world around us can show us the ingredients, but we must decided how we make the dish and what we preheat the oven to.
I totally agree with what you're saying, Melissa. I especially liked your little identity is like a meal difficult to cook analogy at the end. Just like you said, it doesn't make it okay to plagiarize something just because you can relate to it. I can't believe the narrator would make such a stupid mistake and plagiarize something, when it can get him expelled. He has been trying so hard to be the perfect student, so when he does this it was a big surprise to me.
DeleteI completely agree with you Melissa. I thought that you brought up a very interesting point about how someone's voice is just a mixture of voices around them. This point that you bring up fits in perfectly with the narrator. Even though the narrator believes what he is saying is true to him, its is not. The story that the narrator submits is simply just the voice of someone else that he believes is his own voice. I think you really got the point across, Melissa, that the narrator is hiding his identity.
DeleteI also agree with you! I think it's interesting how you discussed that the discovery of A Summer Dance was a wake-up call to the narrator. It made me wonder exactly how self-aware the narrator was throughout the beginning of the book. Obviously, he knew that he was pretending to be someone he wasn't, but how aware was he of the toll it was having on him? It would seem he wasn't very aware at all, and I like the view of the story being not only something he can connect to on a very personal level, but a means for him to discover new things within himself.
DeleteI agree that we find our individual voices in the things we encounter and see around us, but I do think that people's voices are unique. Just because a lot of what people know is picked up from experiences, surroundings ect., doesn't mean we as people are not special and real. Life is experiencing things and applying those things to ourselves, the way we take on challenges and mold our future selves is how we get our voices and identities. No two people are completely different, but I also believe that no two people are completely the same. A person can relate and feel a connection with something that was not originally his/hers, but that doesn't mean they are no longer original. It was the narrators choice to plagiarize. He could have written his own story, about a similar concept. The fact that he plagiarized doesn't mean he doesn't have his own voice it just means he wasn't willing to try hard enough to find it.
DeleteLauren Serotta
ReplyDeleteEssential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
“Passing a shoe store...Men were born to soar, and you have chosen to kneel!”(Wolff 70).
This excerpt from the book really shows how The Fountainhead has influenced the narrator. In this passage he’s on his way back to the school and he sees a salesman cleaning a customers shoe, from reading The Fountainhead so many times, the way he views society has totally changed. The language that the narrator uses when describing his feelings about this whole scene is just horrid. An example of this cruel language is, “...hoping he’d sense my rage and disgust”(Wolff 70), why the language here is so cruel and strong is because I think that he sees himself in the salesman a little bit. That he could have been the salesman if he had not gotten the scholarship. Maybe he sees himself years later after graduating from the school not being able to find a job as easily as his other friends whom unlike him come from a wealthy family. He doesn’t really have the right to be saying this about the salesman because it’s not as if he is of a higher social class than him, not to say that it would be okay to say things like that just because you’re of a higher social class.
Ayn Rand has influenced his behavior so much through the book that the narrator's personality has totally morphed into something that he is not. He calls the salesman a fool and a coward, at least the salesman isn’t making up a fake identity. The coward here is the narrator, through the whole paragraph it is very evident that the narrator is really just insecure about his identity. The narrator is also a fool for letting this book basically take over his identity. This is definitely a sign of a weak character because a strong person wouldn’t be easily influenced by things like this, they would be confident in their own identity. Even going to school with a bunch of rich kids, if you are a strong person then I think no matter how hard it was, you would be yourself. Also with his whole religion situation, I feel as though a strong person wouldn’t be afraid to share their religion. I know that this is a hard and a confusing time period for those types of matters, but he could have at least shared with his roommate, whom he knows is also Jewish.
By The Fountainhead his values are definitely influenced. I think that prior to reading the book the narrator believed in doing what you love/want to do. The comment that he says about how, “Men are born to soar, and you have chosen to kneel”(Wolff 70), makes it seem like that since all of the characters in Ayn’s book are perfect, strong and are not flawed, the narrators view on men has now changed. There is such a big contrast between the word soar and kneel. When I think of the two words, I think of soar as in doing very well and achieving greatness. When kneel makes it sound like you are slaving to someone, so there’s not really anything in the middle. According to this it seems like you’re either a failure or a successful person. The word choice gives the impression that all men have to do something incredible in order to not be a disgrace. From reading this book I think it makes the narrator want to hide his identity even more because people in The Fountainhead are not poor, they are all perfect and brave. Fortunately, after reading another author’s work, he comes to the realization that everyone is flawed and that in the real world not everyone is a superhero.
DeleteI agree with you, this passage shows the readers exactly how much The Fountainhead has influenced the narrator. This post really helped me to see the connection between the salesman and the narrator, and how he sees himself in the salesman, if he hadn't been given a scholarship. I wouldn't say that the narrator was being a coward, but he was being judgmental; he had no idea what the salesman had been through, not everyone is given opportunities like himself. I believe the narrator has a strong character, he just doesn’t know what it is yet, most people aren’t completely sure of themselves or their persona but that doesn't make them a coward or a fool. I also agree that The Fountainhead made the narrator put on even more of an act since all the characters are perfect, which makes me think that Hemmingway's work does the complete opposite; it makes the narrator want to expose his hidden persona.
I agree with what you have to say about how the narrator shouldn't be allowed to say things like this, because he is not so different then the people that he is putting down with his words. Before reading this post the salesman and narrator connection was not evident to me but after, I see that is almost as if the narrator is being intimidated by what he could have been without the assistance of the boarding school. I also agree with your statement that he is a weak character because of the fact that his identity can vary so quickly.
DeleteI completely agree that The Fountainhead and Ayn Rand have influenced our narrator. I hadn't noticed how much he had actually been impacted until you pointed it out. Our narrator is definitely a weak character with all of the influential changes he is going through, and again I agree that if he were stronger that he would be more open about his religion. He hides what he actually thinks about things and I believe the reason for that is he feels that because his friends have more money it makes them more powerful. He doesn't want to be denied or shown as a lesser person to his friends because of his actual status.
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ReplyDeletePlaying the Part
ReplyDeleteEssential Question #7
“By now I’d been absorbed so far into my own performance that nothing else came naturally. But I never quite forgot that I was performing. In the first couple of years there’d been some spirit of play in creating the part, refining it, watching it pass…..It seemed a stale, conventional role, and four years of it had left me a stranger even to those I called friends.” (Wolff 109)
In the novel, Old School, by Tobias Wolff, there are multiple references to the theater, such as acting, role-playing and performances. This motif enables the readers to better understand and relate with the narrator, explaining exactly why he does what he does; displaying to the reader his inner conflict between his two very different personas. The narrator explores the art of acting and putting on a mask, this permits him to adapt to his surrounding and fit in with the elite boarding school that he so admires but at the same time despises the way it confines him. Although at first he finds great comfort in inventing a new persona, by changing the small things about him, such as the way he walks or even dresses, he becomes dissatisfied with himself. The narrator finds himself “embarrassed” when he catches himself in an act, he has been living two lives, and in this passage those two different versions start to butt heads.
When he first starts “performing” he relishes in the habits that help him to become just another ordinary privileged schoolboy. The narrator uses words such as “refining’ and “creating”, as if he is producing a masterpiece. He does everything he can to slip into the background and not stand out, but in this passage the readers see him start to come out of his fake persona. Though the word “fake” is not quite the right word to use, “..manners and speech without ever committing an expository lie, and pleasure in doubleness itself; there was more to me than people knew!” He sees himself having a double life, so in respect they are both as real as the other. The narrator has embodied the different roles he is forced to play, he becomes something he wishes to be but comes to resent it later on. “All that was gone”, He no longer finds pleasure in kneeling down to conformity, and he doesn’t recognize himself anymore. That is why he chooses Colombia as his pick in colleges; he knows that nobody else in his school would choose to go there, that is one of his last acts of defiance to his boarding school persona.
It is human nature to adapt to our surrounding, the so-called “performing” that the narrator is accused of allows him to survive and prosper at his school. Although what he did was wrong, it’s understandable, I believe the reason for his change of heart is influenced greatly from the writer Hemingway, whose’ writing is relatable to the narrator. Hemingway's writing shows the human condition at its most vulnerable, stripped down to its raw self. The narrator came from a low class family and he was able to grasp the opportunity he was fortunately given. The “mask” that the narrator wears at school represents everything he aspires to be and have, but he becomes consumed by his own “want”. And when he finally comes out of his illusion he becomes disgusted with himself. For something that came so “naturally” to him, it left him a stranger to his friends and more importantly to himself. The narrator is still trying to find himself and his true identity, and will probably be searching for the rest of his life, just like the majority of the worlds’ population. There is nothing wrong with that, if “acting” is the only way for the narrator to feel a sense of belonging, what's wrong with that? Eventually he will quit the performing and come into his own.
Olivia, I agree completely with the points you are making. The narrator adopts a new identity. He truly is acting out a totally different person. You said that in the beginning the narrator is performing and trying to form himself into a new person. By the end, the narrator does not even know who he is anymore. He has lost his true self. This is 100% accurate. I also thought it was very interesting what you said about him going to Columbia. He knows no one else from his school is going to go there, so he sees it as a fantastic opportunity to stop performing. Olivia, you brought up many new and valid points that I agree with.
DeleteI completely agree with you! I love the way you talked about the Narrator thinking of it as a double life instead of pretending to be someone else. I really feel like that is how he thought of it but later realized he was completely wrong. He was so caught up in the thought of being more complex because people didn’t know everything about him that he didn’t realize he was trapping himself. I love the idea of him having a mask but I feel like later in the book the mask starts to become harder to take off and he is fully becoming someone he is not. Although he feels like he can just stop acting when he leaves the school it would't work out that way. Later on in his life when he met up with the girl who wrote summer dance he still would't fully admit who he was.
DeleteI really like the passage from the book that Olivia chose, I feel like it completely answers the question, and prompts new ideas. I agree that the narrator has become a whole new person over the years of being st the school, not telling the full truth, just trying to fit in. I also agree with Erin, I like how you brought up how he went to Columbia, it shows how he didn't like his whole act of performing, the play was over. Now that we read the end of the book, I don't agree with your last sentence, that he will come to his own. After reading I still feel like he isn't really content with the person he is. Yes, he definetly has improved his self esteem, but I still get a feeling that by the end he wasn't fully there.
DeleteI agree with Alex in that, now reading the end of the book, the narrator isn't content with who he is still. I do believe that he has turned his life around after getting caught for plagiarizing, after all he has done good for America by serving in the military and then after that he created a family for himself. Though all of that was good for him, after hearing the conversation between him and Mr. Ramsey at the bar, he still seemed to have a wondering of what life would've been had he chosen a different path. Seeing Mr. Ramsey just brought him back to his years at the school and allowed him to dwell in the past, making him feel a bit unfulfilled. He still has his life to go back to but he will also always remember his past.
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ReplyDeleteAlex Merrill
Page 125-126, Old School
"Everything's okay. That was the last line.......Every moment of it was true"
responding to #6
"Everything's okay", even the narrator admits, that the whole story he read was NOT okay. So, then why is he using this story? He believes that even from the very first sentence he was looking himself right in the face. These few paragraphs I chose are examples of how the narrator truly thinks that this story is the spitting image of himself, and he is going through all this struggle just to let out who he thinks he really is, in a way so that he wont get into trouble. Throughout the passage he is trying to convince himself that this person is who he actually is! He uses various examples from the story, and it seems to me like he is trying so hard to convince himself that he IS this person. The narrator is then overjoyed that he can finally let the truth escape, using words like "the sweetness of flight" and "lightness of joy and escape".
In my opinion, to discover ones voice means that you are discovering who you truly are inside. The narrator in Old School is discovering/confessing to himself how he truly views himself, who he really is, and and this point in the book, he is discovering his "voice" and at his is the point the narrator believes that this other person’s story is according to him, his life exactly. To discover your voice is to confess to yourself first, then the world, who you truly are, and by handing in this story to the contest, the reader feels he is letting the real him out into the open, yet in a very vague way, so that he can back track if necessary.
Knowing this, the second part of the question "How original are our voices?", the answer is pretty clear. In most cases, ones voice is original, I personally think most people would want their thoughts and voice to be original, but not in this case. The narrator is literally taking some other girls story, changing a few names, and calling it his own. We know, and hopefully the narrator will find out, that this person isn't him. He isn't the same as this girl who wrote it, in addition to the fact that this person in the story seems like a pretty awful person, "...Throwing over old friends for new, shameless manipulation of a needy, loving parent..."
There is a huge difference between, influence, imitation, and plagiarism. There is a clear line between all three. An example in the book of influence would be when the narrator was being rude when he went home, feeling better than everyone else he was around, acting superior. Ayn Rand's "Roark" obviously had an influence on the main character. When somebody has an influence on you, you sub-consciously change minor details about yourself to seem more like the person you were influenced by, positively or negatively. In the narrators case, he was extremely influenced by the character in his book, Roark. Imitation is a little bit stronger than influence, copying is like a synonym. Imitation is seeing or hearing what somebody else does, and trying to be like that person, but a different version of the person, because you obviously can't be the person. Plagiarism is most closely identifies with writing. It is taking someones else's ides word for word and saying it is your own. So, bringing these words back to writing terms, influence would be if you take a small detail or idea that you see someone
I agree with your views on how we can discover our voices, hopefully the narrator can find out what his voice is and then maybe he will be more stable. I think the reason why the author does not want to find his voice right now is because he is afraid of what people might think. If he uses some else's work he will feel more secure in the sense that his thoughts and emotions are hidden by someone else's thoughts similar to his own. The fact that he is on scholarship, must put a lot of stress on him, because now his writing has to be perfect in order to keep his place at the school, if he messes up, or if there is a flaw, he's out. With all of this stress, he thinks that "Summer Dance" might be better than anything that he can come up with, as a result he decides to make it his own to reassure himself that he will stay at the school and not return to his old life.
Delete(cont)
ReplyDeleteelse use and put your own perspective on it. Imitation is using someone else's idea, and changing a few minor things, and plagiarism is merely copying someone else's work and giving them no credit, saying its your own. With all being said, I conclude that the narrator plagiarized the other girls story.
Tying this all back into the main question " How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual?" I have many things to say about this question. I honestly believe that it depends how strong you are as an individual, and how co-dependent you are on people around you. The narrator clearly isn’t strong enough to accept himself as the person he knows that he is, which is the whole root to this plagiarising issue. He is so weak, he can’t even put out an original story. He is so desperate that he would rather take the punishment for plagiarism than just proudly tell the world who he is.
"The Actor, Prop, and Stage Are United"
ReplyDeleteResponding to EQ#1
“By now I’d been absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally ...there was more to me than people knew!” (Wolff, 109)
In this passage, our narrator realizes how much of a performance or a character his own identity is, as opposed to who he really is. He has crafted this character of himself so well, and played into it for so long, that it’s almost become him, and I say almost. He does assure us that he hasn’t gotten lost by saying “But I never quite forgot that I was performing.” However, this paragraph lays it out plainly for us how heavily involved the narrator is in the person his peers think he is, we can also say that he’s dug himself into one hell of a hole. He talks about intentionally crafting and refining this character version of himself in his early years at the school; he said that by injecting bits and pieces of his own history into his personal Frankenstein monster, that he hasn’t made it false. It has his brain, his personality, and his thoughts, but it isn’t quite him: it’s who he wants to be.
Tying this into the first essential question, the narrator, being the author of his life, is most definitely influenced by the character he created for himself; he lives through it every day. Its hard for us to believe him in saying that he knows he’s acting when we see the obvious influences of the character in his everyday life, from talking to his roommate, to his passing thoughts walking down the street. I believe we are hearing his story through the eyes of his character at least for the beginning portion of the story. Once he finally admits to who he is, in the form of his Hemmingway submission, we get a different view of his surroundings in general. We finally get to hear his thoughts and opinions before they got filtered through his character. So not only is the story he tells different, the narrator gets to experience things for himself with a different perspective. Its almost as though he’s seen a light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel; whether that light turns out to be Hell’s fire or Heaven’s gate, we have yet to find out.
I completely agree with you when you said that the narrator plays two different characters. His persona at school, is kind of like an alter ego of himself, that as you said, is “his personal frankenstein monster.” What you said about how the “monster” had his brain, personality, and thoughts let me view him and his actions in a new light. He tried to act as if he was a completely different person, and he wasn’t true to himself. He refined who he was to become the best version of who he was, and in the process he chipped off the parts of him that made up who he really was. Reading what you said about his two different personas really helped me notice things about him that I didn't see before.
DeleteI agree but i think maybe he only said he hadn't lost who he was as his last tie to who he truly is the last string connecting his 2 personas that's slowly fraying. i feel like hes saying that he hasn't lost himself because hes afraid of what hes become and hes afraid that soon he wont be able to control it.hes afraid that if he forgets about who he is then hell be completely absorbed into this perfect monster hes made for himself in the image of characters hes taken snippets of to try and become. I'm not saying I'm correct or you're incorrect its just and idea that had come to mind, that if he commits to this character then he'll forgot who he was before and lose that self forever.
DeleteI think you are right Gus, in that: him saying he isn't lost is just a security blanket from what he inevitably will become if he lets things get too far. I didn't thinks about it like that before but it makes perfect sense now that you brought it up. But it does lead one to wonder what he might have been like if he did let his monster off the chain, and if it would translate into the world outside of a sheltered, cookie-cutter boarding school. And I think what you're saying also proves part of my original point that much further: he's dug himself one hell of a hole!
DeleteI agree that the author hardly even thought about being the character he crafted, and that it simply came naturally to him after so long of trying to be that person. I also agree that he has seen some sort of a light at the end of the tunnel, however I don't know if he really ever came clean or showed who he really is. I think before he even plagiarized the story, he saw that light. I think he almost knew that if he really went through with publishing it that he would either have heaven or hell. I think that was part of the reason that he ended up using it, he saw the light and wanted heaven. I think that once he uses the story he feels like he can finally give up the person he was while I don't know if that is actually true or not I agree that we definitely see a change in the narrator and his viewpoint actions after this has happened.
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ReplyDeleteEssential Question #6
What does it mean to discover one’s voice? How original are our voices? How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual? What is the difference between influence, imitation, and plagiarism?
“How do you begin to write truly? I went back to that sentence...Anyone who read this story would know who I was.” (pg 126-127)
To discover one’s self is learning the way that the character wants to be portrayed, and how they want to be characterized. “I changed Ruth’s name to mine, in order to place myself unmistakably in the frame of these acts and designs.” (pg 126) Even though the narrator is copying off of someone else’s work, it shows how the narrator wants to be portrayed in his writing. He wants to open up to people and admit that he had a ‘cigarette-craving’ at one point and became addicted, but he does not actually want to admit it himself to others, because it would involve writing something personally which the narrator struggles in doing. The narrator did not write the story himself, because in the narrator’s words, if he actually did write this story then it would be him ‘giving himself away beyond all recall’ he would be completely stripped of his identity if he were to write a story like this himself. With him just copying someone else’s work about a similar event that he experienced and could relate to, it makes him feel more secure than him writing it himself.
This brings me on to the question, how original are our voices?The reader will never know how original it is, because the reader does not know anything about the author. “I didn’t have a lot of adjusting to do...These thoughts were my thoughts, this life my own.” (pg 126) this is only partially true because, he did not actually write this story himself. The subject of what the story is based on, was what his experience was similar to, but with the way he said ‘these thoughts were my own thoughts’ is contradicting to say, because even though this story that he is copying off of did happen to him, he is still replicating the original author’s writing piece word for word, minus the minor fixations of typos. I think the narrator is getting confused about the difference between his own thoughts and thoughts similar to his. Sure, the original author could have thought something similar to what he thought when he picked up that cigarette but, but it cannot be the exact same thoughts as the writer because it is impossible to think of the same thing when two similar events have occurred at two different times, everyone has a different reaction and opinion to each situation.
In today’s society, many people’s individuality and uniqueness has been influenced by what they observe from others; for example, you see a character on a television show who is visually attractive but bullies people at the same time, this can influence the viewer to make them believe that in order to be pretty, you need to be mean to others. This is why people embrace individuality and uniqueness, so that people can feel comfortable with who they already are, without being changed negatively. This [influence] is similar to imitation in the way that they both have a way to influence other people’s behaviour, while imitation is when an individual observes another’s character, it will influence them into replicating their behaviour. Plagiarism on the other hand, is just copying someone else’s work without giving them credit, “I read it through and fixed a few typos...anyone who read this story would know who I was” (pg 127) but when the person is restructuring sentences that are alike to the ones that the original author has written (imitation), it is still a form of plagiarism. The narrator in Old School has done all three of these acts throughout the book and in these two pages alone. Overall, the terms: influence, imitation, and plagiarism all connect with each other, and the narrator in Old School has demonstrated this.
I agree with a lot of what Zara is saying. I completely agree, how in today's society it isn't abnormal for different people you look up to to have an influence on you, although, I think in the narrators case it is a little different. Yes he is for sure blaimed for plagiarism, although I don't think that he is molding his persona for the same reasons we may do. He is strictly trying to be like others to fit in to this school, and I feel he has been doing this all along. Its interesting, now that we know how the book ends, to see how the narrator has evolved, but at the same time hasn't completely changed, still not being 100% satisfied with who he is.
DeleteEssential Question #2
ReplyDelete“But I might have been wrong. And if I was wrong, supposing so much doubleness in Purcell, it was probably because I saw so much in myself. I should have been rejoicing. I’d been awarded a full scholarship to Columbia University, to work with Lionel Trilling, as I liked to think, and often told myself. An essay I’d written on Shakespeare’s Sonnet #29….” (Wolff 108)
Our narrator has come far in a short time. He’s got his whole life figured out, a college on the lock, an award or two on the shelf, he has all he’s ever wanted. And he asks why he can’t bring himself to be content with his position in society?
There must be something wrong with the system.
The meritocracy works best in small communities, where there is a smaller chance of instability and outliers. But in that small pool of even smaller fish, there exists a big problem. The lesser fish that swim in the same schools as the bigger fish are at a loss. They know that once they go back out in the great blue sea, they are going to slip into chaos. A chaos that can only be controlled by money and influence.
Look at his language, our narrator uses phrases like “I should have..” and “...stroke of luck”. He is the poster child for the meritocratic society Dean Makepeace is fostering. He wants to get a leg up, to have some sort of advantage over this boys. You have to keep tapping away at that double pane, bullet proof glass ceiling and hopefully make a crack big enough so they can hear you on the other side. Sacrifice is inevitable in the system, but failure is unacceptable.
His relationship with Purcell is a complicated one. Purcell is someone who is indebted to the system, he will always excel with or without its help. His success is fueled by others and so is the narrator’s, that’s what ties them together. They can’t live without the other, they drive each other to do better. They owe each other their successes and their failures are measured by how far the other goes to take the advantage.
The binary opposition we see showcased is very important. Purcell represents what our narrator cannot have, money and friends in high places. Our narrator has natural talent and smarts but no money to nurture it further. Where Purcell is advantaged, our narrator is at a loss.
We follow their journey throughout the story, both aspire to things much bigger than themselves. The narrator projects his own hate and distrust onto his friend, “supposing so much doubleness in Purcell, it was probably because I saw so much in myself.” Is this the system’s doing? It causes our narrator to not only second guess himself but others around him. His innocence has been betrayed by his blind ambition, causing him to self-monitor to fit into certain situations, certain circles.
The meritocracy is unattainable in a far reaching society like ours. In our narrator’s school, they can indulge themselves with the illusion of equality, while economic inequality lurks beneath the many layers of brotherhood and fake smiles.
Shreema Chandrasekar
ReplyDeleteEssential Question #6
What does it mean to discover one’s voice? How original are our voices? How do we distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us and those aspects of ourselves and our voices that are truly unique and individual? What is the difference between influence, imitation, and plagiarism?
I think that to truly discover what your own voice is the first thing you have to do is to get away from the social stereotypes. Every single person will try to make you conform to what they believe you should be, how you should look, act, behave, etc. To find your own voice, you have to learn to break away from that, and discover who you really are, without the opinion of anybody else. The narrator shows signs of changing when he decides on what college he will go to in the future. He’s lost himself so deep into the facade he’s been fine-tuning ever since he got to the school he’s completely forgotten about who he really is. His real identity is gone. His choice of choosing Columbia, as he wrote in the book, was to get away from the kind of lifestyle he was living at the school. When he first entered the school, he tried his hardest to fit in, to be one of them. He didn’t want anyone to know what his true self, his true identity was. “By now I’ve been so absorbed so far into my performance, that nothing else came naturally.” Going to Columbia would let him find his own way, and he’d be able to express who he really is without being afraid of the backlash he might have gotten at the school.
I don’t think that anybody’s voice is really their own. Everyone gets hurt, or will get hurt by what people say about them; whether it was accidental or on purpose. There is no way to avoid that. Even if we don’t want to, their comments and little snides will affect us, and it is in human nature try to alter our personalities to be a better version, just a way to make ourselves more likable towards everyone. One thing we need to learn is that others views on us don’t matter; it is impossible to make everybody love us. The narrator realizes that when he’s a senior. All of his life at the school, he has been trying to change his background, change who he is, to get a fresh start on this opportunity of a lifetime that he’d been granted.
There is a saying, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It is okay to act in a certain way that may be how another person acts. Plagiarism on the other hand is taking one’s work and passing it off as your own. There is nothing wrong with imitation, as its just an unconscious action. But when someone plagiarizes, they know that what they’re doing is wrong, but continue to make that mistake anyway.
I think thats its really impossible to distinguish between the people/texts/social roles that influence us. There is bias in the world wherever you look, hidden, or out in the open. Even when you’re growing up, there are always people just pulling the strings attached to your back, telling you how to act. When you grow up, you learn the differences between what is right and wrong, but that string is still there, except now its just invisible. On one hand, you know the opinions of the people around you, but now you know for yourself if its true. The narrator’s life is a mix of everything he has experienced, just like all of us. The influence of people/texts/social roles wrapped together is what makes you who you are as a person. In the end its your decision on how you choose to lead your life, and those experiences are what makes you who you are meant to be.
DeleteI completely agree with your views on society transforming who one really is. I like how you put it that people all throughout your life are going to be “pulling on different strings on your back” and how you have to resist and not follow the stereotype and be you. All the little digs and pushes people put on us throughout our life can really steer them in a different direction and can mislead you into determining who you really are.
Erica Wasserbach
ReplyDeleteEssential question #4: As different writers influence the narrator, how do his values and his identity morph and change? Is that pliability a sign of a weak character? What do you think of him along the way and why?
“I wasn’t writing, but that didn’t trouble me- I knew I could deliver my story when the time came. What I was doing was tanking up on self-certainty, transfusing Roark’s arrogant, steely spirit into my own.”
In the book, the narrator meets several different writers that all write in several different forms. He finds himself easily persuaded by the authors ideas such as that of Ayn Rand, where at one point the narrator even finds himself feeling short tempered with certain people. I do believe that because of this quick identity change that it does resemble a weak character in a sense that he wants to and is trying to be someone he isn't and can't make a name for himself with who he really is. The narrator feels that in order to be welcomed into this community of boys and in order to become a great writer that he has to change who is and who he is becoming.
In this quote, the way that he is even speaking comes off in a cocky and overconfident sense when he says, “I knew I could deliver my story on time” it comes across as, I’m such a good writer that I don’t need all this time to come up with a good idea, and I can just do it on the spot last minute. By “transfusing Roark’s spirit” it makes it seem like in order to write good material the author needs to first, become someone he’s not and channel that character. In order to be considered a strong character, you must build a foundation for yourself and then develop a written piece off of that foundation based on what you believe in. When the narrator reads certain books, and when certain authors come to visit he finds himself trying to be like them because to him that is what success is, and how you will reach it is by becoming those people. Through these situations that the narrator has demonstrated that he isn’t these people that he aspires to be and he most likely never will be unless he develops his own opinions and thoughts and puts it into his own writing.
All of this opinion change just makes you think less of the narrator and have less respect for him and his values. I believe that since he has attended this school, he has somewhat lost his way in that he can’t write his own material, and since he is one of the only boys who are attending on a scholarship, one would think that he would have an interesting opinion and writing style. It is good to be inspired by certain writers but not to try and modify yourself to become someone else, because those ideas from others will only last so long. It is better to just be able to think of fresh ideas on your own terms, a new and different style is appreciated more by readers.
I agree with Erica completely. The character is unlikeable to begin with, but his actions continue to make reader’s think less of him. I also agree that it is a positive that he is being inspired by writers he is exposed to but he is taking advantage of it. Being given these opportunities at his school is making him arrogant. I like how Erica points out how he has become over confident in his writing ability. I agree with the concluding statement that original ideas are much more respected than the copying of others.
DeleteI agree with Erica, i don't think that the narrator is well-liked throughout the book, and i think its supposed to be that way, that Wolff is trying to get us to think, about maybe why we don't like him, mainly because of how he hides his identity, and how he steals the story. But i think Wolff wants us to try and step into the narrators shoes and see how hard it really may be to fess up to that in his situation.
DeleteI also agree with Erica when she talks about him always adapting to the new authors style, and almost the personality of the writing.
I completely agree with you Emily when you said that Wolff wants the readers to try to step into the narrators shoes and really experience the hardships of being honest. Although the narrator may not be the most original person out there, it doesn't make him a bad person and I think that's really important for the readers to grasp. If anything that makes the narrator more real for the readers, Wolff in a way is writing in a style similar to Hemingway, since the both strip their characters down to the core and characterize their characters realistically.
DeleteI totally agree with Erica’s analysis of the narrator and how we view him shifts a lot throughout the book. I especially liked how you pointed out that the narrator seems to change his ideas and even his persona based on the visiting authors. As Maddie mentions, its not really a bad thing that he becomes inspired by these famous authors, but it is definitely not healthy for him to transform his entire writing style to essentially shape it to theirs every time the next author comes along. As Erica points out, his writing will never really be truthful until he can come up with his own thoughts and ideas instead of simply imitating the writing of others. This weakness that the narrator displays really showcases his insecurity in his writing and the desperation to have it fit with his idea of acceptable. This habit seems to show throughout the rest of the time that we see the narrator in the future, as his life seems a bit disorganized and he still has not really figured out what he wants to do with his life.
DeleteKierstyn Gurney
ReplyDeleteEQ #4
“We were allowed a fair number of cuts, by the end of April he’d used his up and the demerit meter was ticking… I didn’t like to wonder if my responsiveness was only another kind of snobbery” (Wolff 105-106).
The narrator of Old School continuously is becoming more of himself throughout the story, it’s not that the readers are figuring more about him but it is that through the influence of other people and writings he is coming out as who he truly is and not hiding by being a student in the school. The school they attend, being a private school, basically entails that you come from a rich family in able to go there. For our narrator that is not the case, he comes from a broken family that does not have a lot of money. Both of his parents are dead and he has been cared for by his grandparents. He is luckily at this school on a scholarship that could easily be taken away from him with a simple mistake. He happens to also be Jewish, from his dad’s side, so during this time period it’s not something you would come out and share with people in fear of the aftermath of the Holocaust.
With the secretive background of the narrator, he is starting to have a change is his ideas and values because of the other characters in the book. One of his close friends, “Little” Jeff Purcell, is one of the largest influences to his change of ideas. Jeff comes from a very rich family and has a father with many connections and Jeff seems to be taking advantage of it, “We were all allowed a fair number of cuts, by the end of April he’d used his up and the demerit meter was ticking” (Wolff 105). If Jeff was to skip another class he would be expelled, but his father’s connections can get him back in or get him another offer. Our narrator is getting frustrated with the dismissive attitude if Jeff, for our narrator he is honored to be at such a great school and he thinks that Jeff should take the school more seriously because of the opportunities it can bring him instead of getting expelled putting his schooling years there to waste. Jeff can’t go through life thinking that his father will be able to pick him up when he falls and our narrator has now noticed that.
Jeff has quite the opinion of the Bible and attending attending Chapel everyday, he described the Bible as “Hebrew novel” making it a fictional story. Jeff’s constant force away from Chapel has brought our narrator to having a constant force against Jeff’s opinion. Our narrator believes that taking 15 minutes everyday is nothing, going to Chapel doesn’t mean you have to believe all that you hear. He also disagrees with Jeff in the Chapel is not worth going to, in fact, the narrator enjoys Chapel, “The chaplain always did a short reading and led us in a couple of hymns, but we were otherwise left to the silence and the dark wood, the glowing windows and rough stone and dim vaulted spaces overhead” (Wolff 105). The narrator respects the features of the Chapel and the silence it brings, but after realizing Jeff’s stance of Chapel he builds on the idea that Jeff should be taking the school more seriously and to stop being dismissive. This has furthered our narrators idea that he is actually more different from his friends than he thought. This is allowing him to become more of himself and create ideas that are mainly influenced by his own thoughts.
Essential Question #4
ReplyDelete“This, I decided, this sadistic dullness, this excruciating compulsion to please, was how you ended up after a lifetime of getting A’s in obedience school… Men were born to soar, and you have chosen to kneel!” (Pgs. 69-70)
This passage relates to essential question #4, as it shows how the narrator is internalizing the morals and views expressed in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. Once he began to read this book, the narrator began to loathe where he has come from, and the humble people around him; He calls his school an “obedience school,” which certainly makes it sound as though it is a place people are sent to have their creativity and self-worth sucked out of them, to be turned into tools for the use of others, like dogs are. The narrator looks at the people in The Fountainhead and compare them to real-world people. Using only the evidence of his brief observations, he draws the conclusion that these people have not only never bothered to dream, but have never bothered to try and achieve those dreams, like how his grandfather went into the air force but never learned to fly; that they have never done anything for themselves, but only live to serve others in petty ways, as the man at the shoe store seems perfectly content simply to serve his customer. This is something seen quite clearly in Ayn Rand’s works -- this idea that everyone is responsible for their own happiness, that people are born to strive for perfection for themselves, that no one should serve anyone else.
It is true that this drastic twist of the narrator’s worldview could characterize him as a malleable person or a weak character. I believe, though, that it simply characterizes him as a youth. It seems far more likely to me that, rather than it being that The Fountainhead completely changed who he was, it instead brought out in him feelings that he had harbored all along. He always was, for example, excited to go to his school, whistling in the halls and being generally merry. At the same time, though, in his darker moments, it became clear that he did harbor -- or at least, had the potential to harbor -- a resentment towards it and what it tried to make people into, as when he called it a “snob factory” on page 23. The Fountainhead didn’t change him entirely, but forced him to acknowledge, if in a very extreme way, things that had always been there but which he had never noticed before. It forced him to look at his own faults, the faults of those around him, and the faults of society and to want to rebel against them. He shows now a desperate need simply to be who he is, shamelessly -- which would surely be a welcome respite after the constant pressures of trying to fit in, to get good grades, to make himself seem to be who he wanted to be rather than to be who he was. Thus, I think that the narrator is not a weak character, but a tired one, and a realistic one.
Essential question #6:
ReplyDelete“It went beyond the obvious parallels…Anyone who read this story would know who I was” (Wolff 125-127).
I don’t think anyone ever finds their own voice, we hear things others say and we attach ourselves to it; maybe because what they said is a comfort we never got at home, or maybe it stands for something we see as fair, something that makes us equal, but usually it’s because their voice connects to how we feel. The narrator read the story and saw himself, “From the very first sentence I was looking myself right in the face” (Wolff 125). He saw his life in the story, he just didn’t know how to put it into words so he took hers. He can’t discover his own voice because it’s being muffled by a story that he thinks is his own.
The problem is everybody is so unique because everybody meets different people, see different places, live different ways, so matter how close our lives may be there is no way it can be the same. There were lines that never applied to the narrator, “yet I’d never mentioned to my schoolmates because it was so ordinary and uncool” (Wolff 125). Being in his school and in that day and age he feared his social status would dwindled ever so slightly, he was afraid people would think of him and treat him differently because his father was Jewish.
The difference between the narrator taking her story and being influenced by her writing and him plagiarizing it was that instead of being inspired to write about how he was bottling up his feelings, and using his own life experiences, he stole hers. Being influenced is to be inspired, he was but, he hasn’t found his voice, because people don’t know about his religion, “The whole thing came from a truthful diary I’d never kept:” (Wolff 125). He never kept a diary like the story because it wasn’t his. His writing wasn’t pleasing to him, he wanted something real, raw, and truthful, and not a lie that covers up his own.
DeleteI completely agree with what Emily said, especially the part about how people never truly find their own, original voice. In fact, I think a person’s identity can only really be derived from those of others. We seem to be inspired by certain aspects of different ideas, therefore allowing us to compose and conduct our own. With this being said, there will consequently always be a foundation of old thoughts for every new thought. So I did not particularly condemn the narrator for exploring a variety of values. Actually, I thought his indecisiveness helped to direct himself towards a more genuine honesty. It would be absurd if the schoolboy had no struggle at all with self-discovery. In reality, some people struggle with that their whole lives, so it is understandable that a young boy does not know exactly who he is yet. Nonetheless, a person will naturally start to feel more inclined towards particular, defining beliefs, no matter how indifferent they try to remain.
-Sarah Kowaleski
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DeleteI agree with Emily as well, I never actually thought that we attach ourselves to things that other people say and we do that because we never got that comfort at home. This was helpful because I realized that the missing piece of the puzzle can be found in society, when you meet people you can actually find the missing piece that you have been looking for that you never obtained. Like when the narrator never got the compassion and love from his father, shows how you might never get something that you need at home. This post really helped me to see that the outside world can be an alternative if you have things missing in your life, and I now see that relations/connections with the people in your society can make a change in your life. When the narrator says "I fled the house every chance that I got...new year" (pg 69) we see that the narrator is not getting what he desires at his grandparents' home. He says that he fled the house every chance that he got and would take a bus ten miles away. He obviously feels more fit in with society than with family. This is an example of what Emily was saying: he feels warm and comfortable with society. A different way that I would organize your thoughts is that your kind of getting away from fitting in with society when you bring up that the narrator's father is Jewish. How is that a missing feeling from home? If it was something that the father did than it would he something that has to do with his home, right? Overall, you did a good job!!!
Delete
ReplyDelete“Ayn Rand dipped her head in acknowledgment… Boys! Please! You are born to be giants not earthly sacrifices” (Wolff 83).
Meritocracy is when everyone is for themselves basically. It has benefits and drawbacks. Ayn Rand believes that if everyone cares for themselves then everyone would be happy and wouldn't have to worry about others. She thinks that people should be on their own all the time. If you have a problem its up to only you to take care of it. Her idea is really about everyone wouldn't need all of this help if they did not depend on any.
By the author saying that she “dipped her head in acknowledgement” its getting this sarcastic feel from the question. She also states that boys are are born to be superior people and that they need to not be stepped on. They need to be the “giants” and not be the sacrifice. Ayn Rand also doesn't believe in and sort of religion, This shows because some of her ways and beliefs might come across immoral to others. In different religions its believed that you find happiness by helping others.
Many believe that meritocracy is selfish. In a way it most definitely is. It is saying that everyone is fending for themselves and if anyone were to help someone it would throw off the whole idea. This is why it's virtually impossible. Due to human nature people do end up helping eachother. We are all only human so when someone needs help a lot of people’s instinct is to come and aid. In order for Ayn Rand’s idea to work it would have to be from the beginning of mankind.
If no one helped each other in reality there would be no businesses and marriages would potentially fail. Its human nature to help one another, but when do you draw the line? If everyone helped people for every little thing then people would have no reason to try. But if no one helped at all, that wouldn't work either. There has to be a balance of how much you give. Balance is what makes society go about.
Danielle, I totally agree with what you said about meritocracy. So if Ayn Rand thinks that people should really only care about themselves thus not having to care for others. Does she not believe in doctors, police officers, etc? Not everyone can be a doctor, so when you need medical attention and you don't have a medical degree, what would you do? I really liked how you said that a good society has a balance between helping others and only being out for yourself. I think that it’s important for others to help each other. Although, like what you said, if people were getting too much help no one would know how to do things on their own and lose the will to try.
DeleteBhav Singh
ReplyDeleteBlog 4-6
“In Russia, she said, as a student in Petrograd University, I studied by candlelight...She looked away only when a log collapsed heavily in the fireplace, sending up a flourish of sparks”
(Wolff 81-82)
Essential question #1: How is identity linked to storytelling? If we are authors of our own lives, how do the narratives we create about ourselves influence our behavior, our attitudes, and our actions? How do these stories help us to make meaning out of our experiences and to make choices that steer the directions of our lives?
In the beginning of this passage Rand talks about how she studied in Russia and studied in college; how she studied by candlelight and how there was no firewood which caused her ink to freeze in her pen. Ayn Rand never gave up she kept fighting until she crossed the finish line.; she did not fall to the Russian popes, she did not give into fear; she did not accept defeat. Ayn Rand creates an identity and that is that she is strong. An example of her strength is displayed when her book, The Fountainhead, got published after being rejected twelve times. By not giving into defeat ultimately leads to her achieving her goal. Storytelling links to identity because the identity either makes the story interesting or dull depending on the identity of the characters.
Ayn Rand explains the true meaning of identity by expressing herself in different ways, she seems to be demanding when she says: “So please do not tell me that characters such as mine do not exist! No!”, followed by her slapping the arm of the chair. The way that people show themselves to society can alter their identity. Ayn Rand builds up more of her identity when she gives the narrator a look with her dark, deep-set eyes when he let a sneeze out he was holding in. The narratives that we create about ourselves influence our behavior because when we (in this case Ayn Rand) create stories such as the Fountainhead after being rejected numerous times, in a way her behavior makes her seem like the supreme. Her attitude develops as well, we see in this quote because her attitude changes as mentioned before that she sounds demanding when she says :“So please do not tell me that characters such as mine do not exist! No!”. Her actions have changed because of narratives Ayn Rand has become very strict because after finally getting everything expressed in the Fountainhead she now has a stronger opinion on things such as when she slapped the arm of her chair after arguing about the existence of her characters.
These stories help Ayn Rand to structure her character based on what these characters do in her book. And after building experience with writing she thinks that a real story can only be a story of the folks next door--a story and compromise and failure. These stories help her to make choices, what sort of advice to give the boys at the school. Overall identity plays a huge role in storytelling and the author’s behavior, attitudes and actions.
Essential Question #4
ReplyDelete“The Fountainhead made me alert to the smallest surrenders of will. Passing a shoe store, I saw a young salesman in the act of bending over a customer’s foot. I stopped by the window and stared at him, hoping he’d sense my rage and disgust. You--is this your dream? To grovel before strangers, to stuff their corns and bunions into Hush Puppies? And for what--a roof overhead and three squares a day? Coward! Fool! Men were born to soar, and you have chosen to kneel!” (Wolff 70)
This is a clear example of how these new authors that the main character is stumbling upon has influenced him in many ways. When the book started out, he was very quiet and to himself. This passage shows him forming opinions and views on certain concepts. Many people would walk right past these people working, but it has been made clear that he is not like many other people. These authors have influenced him, and he finds new perspective’s that the authors have. For example, Ayn Rand. It has been made clear that she has a very different opinion on many things. The main character finds them intriguing, and thus, he walks through life with more insight.
I think that in some ways, this does show that he is a weak character. He seems very indecisive on what he believes, by the immense ways that he is being influenced. The main character definitely does not seem very sure or happy with himself. Throughout the whole book, he will form an idea, but then change it just because he heard the opinion of another writer. This proves that he doesn’t really have thoughts of his own and that he bases what he thinks on what other people view.
The main character seems like a nice kid, but essentially he is very uncertain of himself. He also seems extremely secretive. For example, in the beginning of the story, he is very hesitant to tell people of his religion. Even his roommate, who is supposedly one of his best friends, is on the outside of this secret that he is Jewish. If he was sure of himself, he would be proud to say that he is Jewish and not keep this secret from so many people.
He also seems very shaky on his thoughts and opinions. As stated above, he is influenced by the authors that he reads. If he was confident, he would have beliefs, and be able to read other authors without changing them. The fact that he has stumbled upon so many authors and changed his opinion so many times, proves what a pushover he is, and also shows that he isn’t content with his life at all, or he would stop changing himself to be like people he is not.
“By now I’d been absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally. But I never quite forgot that I was performing...There’d been pleasure in implying a personal history through purely dramatic effects of manner and speech without ever committing an expository lie, and pleasure in doubleness itself: there was more to me than people knew!...When I caught myself in the act now I felt embarrassed. It seemed a stale, conventional role, and four years of it had left me a stranger even to those I called my friends...My stories were designed to make me appear as I was not. They were props in an act. I couldn’t read any of them without thrusting the pages away in mortification.” (page 109-110, Wolff)
ReplyDeletePlagued with a certain inner indecisiveness, the narrator of Old School, by Tobias Wolff, impulsively manifested a false identity with resounding bravado and unapologetic ambitions. Ultimately, by devotedly doing just this, an inevitable ambivalence soon swelled within his chameleon soul. In fact, the romanticized thrill of “doubleness” was eventually lulled into oppressive boredom and obligation.
With an amplified obsession to embody prestige, especially through a coolness on the verge of assumed indifference, the narrator entered his elite prep school wearing a mask of deception. Although, as he recalls with an underlying wistfulness, he had done so with much pleasure. However, by specifically using this word “pleasure,” the narrator accordingly hints at a sense of fleeting amusement. The impression of him adoring a petty, unfulfilling indulgence is therefore implanted in the minds of the readers, essentially leading them to further condemn him for his insincere behavior. The author must have deliberately avoided using a more substantial form of happiness, such as “contentment,” perhaps intending to provoke resentment towards anything that does not fully liberate the character. So, from this, the audience is then encouraged to truly confront themselves, moreover cultivating a passion for authentic revealment that even the main character himself was too cowardly to bring about.
Nevertheless, the narrator refined his cause for this charade with some pretty compelling logic, reasoning that his calculated evasiveness was merely harmless fun. Well, that and an obvious lurking need for acknowledgment and acceptance. But what seemed to really make him gravitate towards these quiet lies, touched on by the subtlest of strained gestures, was the victory of mystery.
Subsequent to mourning the initial delight of developing an ideal identity, the narrator exclaims, “...there was more to me than people knew!” (109, Wolff). The meaning of this phrase holds as much duality as the schoolboy’s personality, thus giving a trace of insight into the transition from his amusement to his ache. In the wake of an exhilarating act of cunningness, back when the narrator still relished in the mastery of trickery, he had probably noted people’s unawareness for his hardships with triumph. He must have applauded himself for so thoroughly and convincingly playing his part. However, his success in doing this doubtlessly became too constant, enough so that the rewarding sparks of fun soon faded away. Consequently, once the innocence of his play was ebbed, a burdening sense of obligation to remain incognito took hold. It had become exhausting labor to exude characteristics unnatural to his true being, so maybe there was also anguish laced within that passing cry. He had always been aware of his hypocrisy, but the suddenly stark loneliness of it must have finally been enough to provoke self-reflection. By refocusing his pride and pretension, the narrator was then able to contemplate his pathetic grasps for an unattainable identity.
Continued
ReplyDeleteBasically, the enthusiasm and fascination in creating and recreating a whole new life for himself had gotten to a point where everything else came unnaturally to him, especially as he tried to preserve that new life. It was as if he were developing his identity like how he would a story. The narrator made sure to assert himself, in every aspect possible, as the epitome of whatever he wanted to be distinguished as, which quite often varied. By attentively integrating ideas and mimicking behaviors of those who have exemplified qualities he found most intriguing and attractive, the narrator unwittingly influenced the outcome for every ensuing action of his.
When he settled into the personality he currently liked best, he tried his best to portray it in a credible way. Being the author of his own narrative, he consciously determined the values he gave the most weight to, acting on them in order to maintain his sense of being. Additionally, he is able to rely on his newfound set principles to find clarity in times of obscurity. It is much easier to derive meanings out of experiences when he can reference these beliefs. Rather than just scrambling around in the dark void of an undecided mind, a resolute identity can more efficiently process some ordeals. By already having a determined way of thinking, interpretations will, most likely, pertain to many conditions of that specific way of thinking. Therefore, depending on his prevailing personality, the way the narrator developed views and acted on those views allowed for both his identity to shape his story, and his story to shape his identity.
-Response to Essential Question #1
AAll That Ubermensch “Stuff”
ReplyDeleteEssential question #1: How is identity linked to storytelling? If we are authors of our own lives, how do the narratives we create about ourselves influence our behavior, our attitudes, and our actions? How do these stories help us to make meaning out of our experiences and to make choices that steer the directions of our lives?
“The german word shut me up. Our history master used it… with so many complications of ambition and envy and pretense.” pg. 72, Wolff
This passage takes place right after classes resume from the schools holiday. The narrator is speaking with Bill regarding Ayn Rand's work of Fountainhead, when Atlas Shrugged is mentioned Bill responds by saying he dislikes all of that ubermensch stuff. The narrator then takes a sidebar to think about what Bill said. The narrator's identity is linked to this passage through his jewish ancestry.
The narrator applies his identity in his writing through the diction he uses, associating germans with murderers and ridiculing his history masters “excessive” use of the word. The narrator feels as if he can relate to Bill about this topic due to his heritage, and shows how this is a more personal issue in his thoughts. One line “would touch so tender a nerve” shows that while he feels this is easier to relate to, he sees that Bill can relate to ubermensch even easier than he himself can.
An earlier line “when BIll flashed the word” gives the reader the impression of taboo surrounding the idea, furthered by the tone of the narrators writing. The narrator also portrays the idea of this being a sensitive topic, shown through his diction with words like fragile and tender. The final line of his thought shows that he in a way dismisses the issue, and decides not to pursue it further. He briefly outlines the reasons as “complications of ambition and envy and pretense.” The overall comprehensive tone of the writing gives the reader the sense that he thought this up rather quickly while talking with Bill, contemplating whether or not to question Bill. Ultimately he decides that the relationship he has with Bill was already fragile enough and not to pursue it. The narrator uses careful diction and tone to bring his identity into his writing.