Old School Summary Analysis

In Tobias Wolff’s ingenious novel, Old School, a boy in a 1960s prep school is involved in a conflict with fellow schoolmates for an audience with legendary writers.  The recognition, if achieved, from this emotional and spiritual competition is something to look back upon for years.  Old School’s narrator is a boy who will fully understand his compassion in writing but in return it will lead to his demise.

            The protagonist of the story starts with a goal to have an audience with one of the most legendary writers of his time.  These writers include Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemmingway.  The boy in the story is rejected by Frost from George, the head editor of the schools editorial who Frost selected to have audience with.  This defeat boosted the narrator’s confidence to win the next audience with Rand, a not so popular author.  Obsessed with her one story, The Fountainhead, he begins to understand and learn of a new way to write novels, through one’s own experience in life.  “It had dawned on me that I didn’t really know anyone like Roark or Dominique (characters in The Fountainhead). Though Ayn Rand insisted that such people existed and that she herself was one, my own experience of them was purely literary.” (page 93)  Being defeated by an unexpected character, the protagonist learns the truth of Rand being too rational and mocks Hemmingway’s work.  The narrator then dissolves what he achieved from reading The Fountainhead and envelopes a period of misunderstanding.  Finally, he brainstorms a masterpiece of writing using his own experience in life, but where he obtains the brainstorm does not come to his mind until the headmaster’s find out about the plagiarized piece.  The protagonist won the audience but no soon after realized he just copied the writing from a Susan who wrote the story five years back.  This disgrace to his school community resulted in his being kicked.  Not only did he fully understand his compassion and true writing style and capabilities but understood now what he can only achieve next, which is to go to war.

            Tobias Wolff’s, Old School, puts the narrator in a world of true competition and understanding of writing.  The protagonist continually is defeated by fellow competitors in winning an audience with one an esteemed writer until he finds a book with a story similar to his personal life.  He uses it to win the audience of Ernest Hemingway and then resolves in demise as he did not realize the plagiarism involved.  This demise only led him to achieve one thing after being kicked out of prep school and not being able to go to Columbia, which was only to join the war.