This Boy's Life Analysis

The setting shifts a number of times in the book, as a part of Jack and his mom's nomadic, shifting lifestyle. But the bulk of it takes place in the delightful little town of Chinook, which is full...

 If you're writing an autobiography, this is the voice to use. You can't look at the events from anyone else's perspective but yours. More importantly, you're the hero of your own story, so yo...

This Boy's Life is non-fiction, and since it's told by its own subject, that lands it pretty clearly on autobiography's turf. Wolff writes about his own experiences, unexceptional in the grand sche...

It sounds like it's all over the map, but the book really does embrace all three notions. Jack's life is far from cheerful and we feel every savage punch that life sends his way. What can we say? "...

Wolff doesn't want to lose us to flowery phrases and poetic lyricism (which doesn't really fit his whole Portrait of the Hooligan as a Young Man approach anyway). His sentences are short and get to...

Like a lot of titles, it pretty much cuts to the chase. It's a biography, it's about a boy, so… This Boy's Life seems a tad on the nose. It seems to suggest that there's something special about t...

"The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has discovered."—Oscar Wilde"He who fears corruption fears life."—Saul AlinskyToby gives us a double-whammy here, both of...

Wolff is of two minds about the ending. On the one hand, we wants us to know that his life still has plenty of troubles… specifically by telling us that he got kicked out of prep school when "I b...

Like a lot of great writers, Wolff works because he's very easy to get into. He speaks with a lot of eloquence, but he's not into fancy words and he gets right to his point (or at least sneaks up o...

Mom is kind of nuts.The book's early scenes establish Jack's relationship with his mom, the fact that they move around from place to place, and Jack's need to make up stories about himself. We lear...

A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of the dark power.This is a loose definition, since Dwight's just a mean little man instead of a "dark power," but he does have control over Jack and...

In keeping with tradition, Act I begins at the beginning, as Jack and his mother drive across country to Utah. It ends at the conclusion of Part 2, with Jack's mom agreeing to marry Dwight and the...

Chinook really is in the middle of nowhere.Chinook hasn't grown much since Wolff wrote about it. According to the 2010 Census, it has less than 500 people. (Source)Uranium mining for fun and profit...

Sex in the book is kind of a weird topic. It's not overt—we don't get any hot and heavy details and Jack is apparently still a virgin when the book ends—but things get a little steamy here and...

"The Senator from Rome"In Chapter 21, Dwight refers to President John F. Kennedy as "the senator from Rome." Kennedy was a Roman Catholic—the first non-Protestant ever to be elected President—a...