David Keith

Tobias Wolff - The Epiphany of a Writer

Tobias Wolff is an American writer born June 19, 1945, Birmingham, Alabama.
He grew up with his mother, and his father and brother lived in a different state. As a
young man, Wolff applied and was accepted into the The Hill School, but had applied
under the fake name of Tobias Jonathan von Ansell Wolff III, and forged his transcripts
and recommendation letters, all of which led to his expulsion from The Hill School.
Later, he served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. After his service in
the Army, he attended Hertford College, in Oxford, and Stanford University. He received
his M.A from Stanford and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from the
same institution in 1975.
As a writer, Tobias Wolff is well known for his short stories and memoirs, such as
The Liar and This Boys Life, respectively. In his works, he writes from an interesting
perspective from within a character's psyche, though one could argue it's from more of a
third person narrative. Either way, his actual style of writing combines an excellent
sense of dry humor and brevity, which hides a passively didactic message. Often times,
his characters are considered oddities or outcasts inside their respective worlds,
stemming from Wolffs own childhood, where he felt as though he was out of place and
misunderstood. Taking all of this, you can see a theme carrying throughout many of his
stories of finding yourself and the necessity of self confidence.
Looking at one of his short stories, The Liar, one can see this overall theme. In
The Liar, a young man, James, who is constantly lying, most of the time to strangers,
telling them that his mother has some gruesome or fatal disease. When questioned
about his habit, he always says I don't know, but as the story progresses, you start to
see that James only wants someone to recognize his true self, but is so scared to
expose that part of himself to the cruelties of society, that hed just rather be known as a
liar instead. In the final scene of the story, James is on a bus sitting next to a woman.
They begin to talk, and eventually he ends up telling the woman that he helps Tibetan
refugees and that he could speak their language. Eventually the woman asks him to
sing in the language, and while he fakes it, it ends up calming all the passengers, as
their bus had just broken down. This shows that in the end, James overcame his fears,
in his own way, and did gain some measure of respect for himself.
Another example of Tobias Wolffs overall theme is his short story In the Garden
of North American Martyrs. It focuses on Mary, a history professor who feels stuck, and
like her life up to now has just been dull and lived to the expectations of others. When
the university she teaches at closes down, she is forced to take a job at an experimental
college in Oregon, and for about a year, she suffered in silence. Out of the blue, her
former colleague Louise shows up and offers her an interview at a prestigious university
in New york. Suffice to say, Mary was beyond surprised, but accepted. Fast forwarding
to the day of her interview, she arrives to the university early, and is assigned a student
to take her on a tour of the campus. The student tells her about the school, and
eventually tells her about a new rule, stating that the university must consider at least
one female candidate for job openings. They continue on, and eventually its time for her
interview. She enters the room and is met with a group of professors, and Louise.
Before they begin, one of the professors asks if there is anything Mary would like to tell
them. Mary, half joking, says Yes. I think you should give me the job. When she says
this, no one laughs, and they all look away. At that moment, she realizes that she was
only asked to come here to satisfy a rule. As if they were playing some sort of cruel joke
on her, they still ask her to lecture in front of a class. As she begins her lecture, she
looks at the professors and comes to realize in a sort of epiphany that she will not be
the person that just lets people walk all over her and to be stronger, and teach in the
way she wants to. This reflects Tobias Wolffs overall theme of gaining self confidence
and finding yourself, and shows his own feelings at some point in his life.
My final example of Tobias Wolffs overall theme is his memoir, The Heart of
Whiteness. In this memoir, Wolff is in his office or study some sort of room. Either
way, hes going through old letters to a friend, and is narrating how he is disheartened
that they were polluted with effortful wit and a racist joke here and there. He reflects on
how much his writing has changed, and how as kid, he grew up in a society filled with
racism and bigotry, and how society has also gotten better, though not perfect. This
memoir itself was almost a perfect embodiment of his overall theme, since it's about
getting self confidence, and becoming a better person.
Taking these three works, while some people may not agree, I can only say that
he does focus on the idea of bettering yourself and being confident. It has made me
reflect on myself and society as a whole, and find myself relating to many of Wolffs
characters. Then again, I could be dead wrong about all this, and it may not be what
Wolff had intended at all.