This Boy's Life Themes

We can just as easily put "Coming of Age" here instead of transformation, but "Transformation" does just as well. Jack constantly tries to change who he is in This Boy's Life: to put on different m...

Jack's permanent family in This Boy's Life is his mother, who he loves but who is low-key kind of nuts. To that, he gets Dwight and Dwight's brood, who range from the indifferent to the flat-out ps...

Hand in hand with family comes the Home… something Jack doesn't really have since he and his mom essentially live the lives of wandering Gypsies in the story. People in This Boy's Life think of h...

Jack is, to put it mildly, a fibber. So are a lot of other characters, but Jack really raises it to an art form. The question isn't that Jack lies; it's why he lies (besides the obvious answers, li...

Religion doesn't play a central role in This Boy's Life, but it's kind of lurking there in the background from time to time. It's especially prominent early on, when Sister James tries to make a Ca...

As a poor teenage boy, Jack doesn't have what we traditionally associate with power in This Boy's Life. (He would if he got bit by a radioactive spider, but then this would be an entirely different...

Jack comes of age in This Boy's Life, which means he has manliness on his mind: how to show it, who to exercise it and what that makes him as a human being. Dwight is also focused on masculinity—...

Every teenager engages in a pitched battle against The Way Things are Done. With Jack, it's kind of a two-edged sword in This Boy's Life. He rebels against the rules… but he's also looking for a...

Jack has dreams just like everyone else. So does his mom, his friends, Martin Luther King, and even Dwight (though Dwight's dreams are probably these freaky David Lynch numbers where everything is...