Review: This Boy's Life By Tobias Wolff

Toby’s Fight Against Himself

Young people are most often guided by their parents and guardians of what they should or shouldn’t do. However, some unfortunate ones are left alone to find their own paths. In their search of making their own destiny; some young people choose to fight against all obstacles to reach goals that will lead to a successful fortune, while some will walk an uneasy way and repeat themselves in the misery of self-destructiveness and self-sabotaging behaviors. In Tobias Wolff’s memoir This Boy’s Life, the author presents a life that is built up on continuous self-destructive decisions; making himself his own worst enemy and causing all kinds of pitiful situations which he hopes to change and evolve into a better self, only to once again find him fallen into the very trap set up by no one but himself.
Some of Toby’s self-destructiveness is due to his background.
He was raised by a single divorced mother; and her failing to take a father’s place to become a powerful guardian to correct and care for Toby’s early mischievous signs contributes to Toby’s self-sabotaging behavior later on in his teen years. Toby’s mother-Rosemary is a victim of domestic violence herself and therefore, according to Toby:
She’s never been able to spank me. The few times she tried I came away laughing. She couldn’t even raise her voice convincingly. That wasn’t the way she wanted to be with me, and she didn’t think I needed it anyway...it was just the age I was going through, I’d grow out of it. I was a good boy. (Wolff
60) Toby knows exactly how to take advantage of other people’s weaknesses and in this case, with his mother. Rosemary is unable to monitor and condition Toby’s misbehaver and she chooses only to see what she wants to see. When Toby smokes and finds himself in an argument with his friend Silver about Toby bluffing about killing a turkey, Toby is irritate when his friends show disbelief and he scratches obscene words on the school bathroom’s new painted wall. With vital evidence the vice-principal pressures Toby to confess and still Toby insists on his innocence. Furthermore he makes untruthful accusations that his “weed friends” are lying as witnesses. Rosemary insists: “if he said he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it. He doesn’t lie” (79). It seems to Rosemary that all facts are to be ignored and she is blinded to defend only her son’s words without any doubt. Toby understands that he can get away with anything he does with his mother, and he never really takes the consequences of the mistakes he makes. Rosemary is unable to restrain Toby and educate him with the correct morality and behavior; instead she encourages him to get into more trouble by defending him. A part of Toby himself understands that what he is doing is abusive. His conscious tells him that he is weak and he should thrives and progresses to become a better person as a student academically and athletically, as a friend socially, and as an adult maturely. But, instead of taking control over his behavior, he prefers a passive and escapism attitude:
In my heart I despised the life I led in Seattle. I was sick of it and had no idea how to change it. I thought in Chinook, away from Taylor and Silver, away from Marian, away from people who had already made up their minds about me, I could be different. (89)
Toby admires people with outstanding success and often imagines himself as one of them. He has written letters to his pen friend and TV program idol which he makes up a fake identity about himself who claims to be wealthy, honorable and admirable in imagination. By doing so he gains a false sense of respect and satisfactory through these lies he makes about himself. Escaping from reality is often a strategy Toby decides to apply when handling aggravated situations. The choice of Toby makes to hang out with his improper and outrageous friends also further leads Toby into more self-sabotaging dilemmas. Despite that the Arthur was Toby’s only true friend and Toby’s liking of Arthur due to all the common interest they share, he still draws himself away because of Arthur’s unpopularity. Toby wants to fit in with the rebellious older aged boys in school and declares his honor by indicating “I was grateful for their interest. I wanted distinction, and the respectable forms of it seemed to be eluding me. If I couldn’t have it as a citizen I would have it as an outlaw” (184). His unruly friends’ influence on Toby is tremendous as they continue to participate in illegal activities such as shoplifting, drinking and fooling around while they should be concentrating in schooling. They skip school all day long and steal gas from people’s cars. They hang around in their friends’ houses and participate in unprotected group sexual activities. One time Toby almost gets himself killed by getting drunk and falling off a cliff. Chuck and the others give Toby alcohol and Toby is walking on a branch while he is drunk. The branch breaks and Toby almost drowns if he isn’t lucky. He never truly understands the consequences when he participates in these dangerous acts and often he makes such inconsiderable decisions because of his friends’ influence. A child’s fault must to be blamed for his parents’ lack of guidance. There’s once a fable about a thief is about to be prosecuted because of committing robbery. Before his prosecution he wishes to say his last word to his mother. The judge permit and his mother lay her ear close to her trussed son. But the son bit off his mother’s ear and accused her for not steering his behavior when he was little; therefore end up him becoming a robber. Children’s behavior is shape when they are little, and once their habits are built it is very difficult for them to change. While children are building their own way of thinking and behaving, it is mostly their parents or adult figure they will mimic and learn from, and the guardian is responsible for monitoring the children’s achievements and mistakes. As for Toby, he has no one to learn from for most of his child years he was always left alone at home while Rosemary is at work. If Rosemary was to have paid close attention and provided Toby with strict discipline containment, most likely Toby would have been a better-behaved boy unlike what he’d been in his teen years.