Old_School

Lies: The Result of Shame and Self-consciousness The narrator reread the story again, slower than he had before. He was baffled by how similar his own life had been in comparison to Susan Friedman’s story “Summer Dance”. It was a story about a girl from a Jewish, middle class family. It begins with Ruthie, the main character, who picks up a used cigarette bud found on the ground and hops aboard bus, making her way back to her brick apartment. Later that evening, her classmate from boarding school, Caroline, invites her to a dance at her country club, forcing her to change her last name in order to conceal her Jewish heritage and social class. Status was important and if Ruthie wanted to attend the dance, she needed to lie about her identity. Throughout the book Old School, by Tobias Wolff, characters are put in situations much like Ruthie in “Summer Dance”. The narrator and many other characters in the book lie and deceive the ones who are close to them because they are ashamed of their background. After the narrator reads “Summer Dance” he says, “No character in my story ever rode the bus.” He had been covering up his identity when writing his stories and never conveyed his true background in his writing. The dishonesty indicated by the characters in Old School is a result in one’s lack of ability to feel comfortable with themselves. The Narrator is one character who shows major signs of dishonesty in order to cover up his heritage and socio-economic status. Like Ruthie in “Summer Dance”, the narrator attends a privileged boarding school and yearns for a life like those of his classmates. He feels that the story fits his lifestyle characteristics so much, that it seems the story was written by him. The Narrator says: The whole thing came straight from the truthful diary I’d never kept:….the almost physical attraction to privilege, the resolve to be near it at any cost: sycophancy, lies, self suppression, the masking of ambitions and desires, the slow cowardly burn of resentment toward those for whose favor you have falsified yourself. Every moment of that was true. The situation of the stories protagonist was not unlike the narrators. Because they were so closely related, the narrator took out of a few words, changed the name Ruthie to his own and handed it in for the Ernest Hemingway competition. He hid behind Susan’s work and plagiarized it for his own. It seemed that his life had been filled with dishonesty to the extent that by plagiarizing a paper was just another common action. His lying about his background had become so habitual and common to him that be began to lose sight of his morals and who he really was. “No character in my story ever rode the bus”. This is because he would never let his own character hop aboard a bus, a common facility that middle class people use. The Narrator was too ashamed and too insecure to ever express the truth about his lifestyle, which resulted in him deceiving the ones around him. Another character in the novel who falsifies their past history in order to seem conforming and up to standards is Arch Makepeace. Arch is the Dean of Students at the narrator’s boarding school. He has particular power and status over others at the school because they believe he is a good friend to Earnest Hemingway. It had become a rumor that Arch befriended Hemingway in the war. Although Arch knew this statement to be false, he continued to allow the rumor to slide by and spread throughout the school. In fact, Arch didn’t mind the rumor because his “friendship” with Hemingway gave him status and power at work. The narrator writes: Arch Makepeace was not a man to tell stories on himself. Though he hadn’t intended his silence to mean anything, from his first days at the school people drew certain conclusions from it that gave him an authority. This explains that Arch enjoyed the lift in status he was given when others thought he was acquaintance with Hemingway. When the narrator said, “No character in my story every rode a bus”, it was showing his intention to hide his background. Arch Makepeace has this same intention. In his story, he knew Earnest Hemingway. Like the Narrator, Arch was one to be succumbed by status. He knew that if he was honest about the Hemingway situation, he would have been thought of as less. He was so self-conscious and ashamed of his actual status, that he felt he needed the rumor to make him seem more formidable. Lastly, Jeff Purcell is one of the narrator’s classmates who lies because he knows he has a reputation to uphold. Jeff is a writer who aspires to win the Earnest Hemingway competition. However, he knew that his time was running out and he probably wasn’t going to win. Purcell believed that if he didn’t win the competition, he would be looked at as unintelligent and foolish. This was something that he wanted to avoided. Rash and impractical, Purcell decided the only way to avoid this was to get expelled. His plan to get expelled was to claim he was atheist and skip the chapel mass. Like the Narrator and Arch, Jeff lied about his religion, convincing his school he was an Atheist. Purcell’s plan worked and he was expelled after the third mass. He tricked others and went out of his way to avoid a competition that could possibly degrade his social and academic status. Purcell wasn’t capable of accepting himself, which led him down a path of fraudulent actions and lies. Not only in Tobias Wolff’s Old School, but our everyday lives we see situations where people lie to get ahead because they feel self-conscious and ashamed. The lies range from small white lies to life changing ones. Even if a lie is never articulated like in Arch’s situation, you are still guilty of deceit. So why do we lie' Why do we make up stories in order to impress others and cover up who really are' We commit these actions and tell these stories because we are afraid what others will think of us. We are afraid that if we don’t know Hemingway people might think less of us. We are afraid that if we don’t win a writing competition, we may be viewed to be less intelligent. We are afraid that we won’t be accepted for our social status, heritage or religion. Like the characters in this we live in a competitive society where we are all striving to be the best. When our best falls short, we feel we are not good enough and are enticed to lie in order to gain status. It may be difficult to stop other’s from falsifying their character, but we can stop ourselves from spreading these lies and rumors. It first starts with being truthful with ourselves. Once we realize that everyone is not as authentic as them seem and that everyone has white lies hidden beneath the surface, we will realize that they have flaws too. We must learn from the characters in old school that it is not appropriate to lie about our character. By being dishonest we can gain nothing, because in the end the lies will come back and meet us face to face with the cold, hard, truth. Work Cited Wolff, Tobias. Old School. Knopf; 1st edition 2003