The Influence Of Self-Identity In Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel

Thomas Clayton Wolfe, a native of Asheville, North Carolina, wrote his most well-known work, Look Homeward, Angel, from an autobiographical standpoint. Though structured as a fiction, it has been widely accepted since its publication that the novel was intended to be a roman à clef that mirrored Wolfe’s own life from birth until he left his home state for graduate school at Harvard University. The two decades portrayed in his seminal novel detail his experiences growing up in Asheville at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the character of Eugene Gant and the setting of Altamont. The manners in which Eugene views the world around him, especially the significant characters in his life, are a direct allegory to Wolfe’s own personal experiences. Using this analogical method of interpreting Look Homeward, Angel, it is possible to gain insight into Wolfe’s own perceptions of and personal experiences with the male and female
The two figures that have the most profound effect upon Eugene’s own personality and self-identity are, understandably, his father and mother. At the same time, despite the many traits he inherits from his parents, Eugene is also shown to be singularly unique and separate from his family, in an independent way that sets him both apart from and above some of their tendencies and worries. Through his voracious pursuit of literature, starting at any early age, “Gene” begins to imagine future possibilities for daydream-quality victories and successes in adventuring and wooing. He is “lifted, by his fantasy, into a high interior world…a heroic world with lovely and virtuous creatures….in exalted circumstances…” (131). This isolation from interactions with the people around him is mirrored in some of Wolfe’s own deepest emotions, as he wrote in his article “God’s Lonely