William Pratt
This Boy’s Life Essay
September 19, 2013
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ESSAY Family is one thing everyone needs to lead each other in the right direction and to support one another. Without the proper family role model one might begin to start doing morally and physically wrong things to themselves, those around them, and other objects. These wrong decisions can ruin ones life. In the memoir This Boy’s Life the lesson of how important family is shown again and again. The family role model in this memoir is that of a poor one and is repeated. Toby’s lack of a family relationship starts with his mother. As a child she was part of a wealthy family and di not have to work for anything, “Her father, Daddy as she called him, had been a navy officer and a paper millionaire.” (Wolff 5). Her one goal in life is to live the way she did before the crash. “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered” (Wilde 1). Because Wolf uses his imagination to assume poses and to escape from the childhood circumstances that were presented to him he uses this quote at the beginning to introduce the reader into the story of what was soon to become. However, throughout the book Wolff never surrendered his belief in himself, he had hopes and admiration. As a coping mechanism to escape the domestic violence, alcohol abuse, criminal activity, and emotional neglect; Wolff chooses to reinvent himself, a theme posed through out the book. Jack became overcome by his fantasies and stories so much that even he began to believe them. Jack was desperate for self-recreation throughout the book. He longed for this self-recreation because of his living situation. “There’d been murders. Prostitutes walked the streets in broad daylight, drunk and bellicose” (wolff 6). In these kinds of living environment one must have a strong family to support himself and to be able to get out. Yet Toby does not even have a steady father figure in his life The relationship that Toby has with his mother is a very strong bond. That is evident in the film and the book. But what Toby lacks in both versions of this story is a good father figure, which his mother seems to be always on a journey to find for him. Early in the book Toby has several misadventures with bad influences, whether they are friends or father-like figures. Roy seems to be one of the first influences to really catch the reader’s eye. He follows Toby and his mother all the way to Utah from Florida mostly just to be with Rosemary. Roy uses Toby to get to Rosemary in many ways, for example when he buys Toby the rifle or when he takes him to spy on Rosemary at work and follow her home. Roy makes this seem like it is a game to Toby and befriends him this way. “Roy asked me not to tell my mom what we were dong in a friendly way so I agreed” (Wolff 18). This quote was referring to the point when Roy was following Toby’s mother home from work. What Roy is doing is not teaching Toby anything but lies and deceptiveness. Early teaching such as this lead to Toby making his own bad decisions on his own. Bad parenting influences lead to Toby making the wrong type of friends, which corrupt him even more. With all of these bad influences around Toby he doesn’t know any better but to go along with them. One day at school he writes inappropriate words on a wall. “He wrote obscene words on the wall.” (Wolff 125), says the principle to Toby’s mother. Toby lies and lets his mother defend him and he ends up not getting punished at all. Toby’s escape from his deserved punishment teaches him that he can lie through life, which he continues to do. Toby later lies and cheats his way into a boarding school that he gets kicked out of. All of these lessons Toby had learned the hard way came from bad parenting and poor family relationships. In the memoir This Boy’s Life the lesson of how important family is shown again and again. Toby’s life is affected greatly by the lack of family, which proves the importance of family.