This Boy's Life

Elvis Pizano
English 1A
Dr. Borofka
31 March 2013

Prompt: Compare and contrast This Boy’s Life and The Odyssey as a journey story.

This Boy’s Odyssey
As the story of Jack progresses in This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolf, general situations of which Jack is dealing with coincides with situations and events also depicted in the epic The Odyssey written by Homer. Both stories are written in a sense of progress. They are strongly alike and in alike in various forms of features and aspects in which the story lines fall into. In This Boy’s Life, Jack and his mother, Rosemary, travel from city to city to better themselves and to try to find a better life for themselves. The story is explained through hardships and various different thinking forms of different characters but mostly those of Jack. Identically, Telemachus from The Odyssey shares common tributes with Jack in ways which define and show their advancement into adulthood. As there are similarities, both novels also have differences in which they tell apart from each other. Despite the different settings, both This Boy’s Life and The Odyssey show both similarities and differences in what the main characters are trying to protect, the hardships throughout both journeys, and developed characteristics of bravery and confidence along the way.
Aside from the differences and common content between both novels, This Boy’s Life and The Odyssey showed strong differences in their type of setting in which both took place. This Boy’s Life was starred during the 1950’s during post war years. The country was not in its greatest shape during this time due to the recent world war that had just been present. During this time the main character from This Boy’s Life, Jack, represents a few concepts that were occurring during the 1950’s. Jack is depicted through the story showing a few of the common clothing styles during that time. Jack at one point is illustrated slicking his hair back and sagging his pants a bit just underneath the waist, something that was common during these years. The story also shows that during this time, many civilians were in tough economic times and jobs were scarce for everybody. On the other hand, The Odyssey was illustrated in Ancient Greece after the Trojan War. During this time, there were almost no similarities between both stories. In The Odyssey, there were no cars yet, no laundry washers, no massive advanced ships, no clothing near to that of This Boy’s Life and most certainly any guns. Battles in The Odyssey were still fought with shield and swords unlike This Boy’s Life, was explained to have been during post war years were guns and military missiles were present. In both This Boy’s Life and The Odyssey, the main characters both search for help and try to aid their beloved mothers. Jack is a small boy who still has a far ways to understanding life and the type of setting that took place during the 1950’s. He has only his mother for which he could truly call family and relies on the happiness and motivation from each other to live an acceptable lifestyle. Jack is influenced by his peers and items to become the type of common young boy he is. Jack isn’t a good noble angel but neither is he a ruthless troublemaker. His mother is always working and is more than often not home. Jack goes through several events in his childhood that make him realize his mother and his “family” in general isn’t what they want. He realizes that he could become a help to his mother and tries to aid her but with the situations he is in while growing up make it hard for him to take care of his problems and still be able to help his dear mother out. As for Telemachus, he is put into a situation in which he must stand up for himself and his mother in order to restore or help provide order to his father’s land. Telemachus goes off on a journey to find the whereabouts of his lost father in order to aid his mother in the tense suitor situation she has been put into. Along this journey, Telemachus must also gain experience in order to become an adult and also to be able to show his power and inner hero as his father would have done.
Both stories revolve around obstacles and hardships the characters must overcome in order to proceed in their life. In The Odyssey, Telemachus must venture with a small crew of his own to find news about his father. He does this in secrecy of his mother and forbids the family nurse to speak of anything until he returns from his voyage. During this journey, Telemachus must put himself into his father’s position in which he greeted kings of further kingdoms and befriended old friends of his father who helped him find traces of his father’s location. Telemachus must also take matters into his own hands with the present situation in which his father’s household is in. He knows that he himself cannot defeat the ruthless suitors and in aid to his mother, he decides to travel the kingdoms in search of his father. Unlike Telemachus, Jack is basically a lonely young kid. He has ultimately grown up with only his mother and certain friends that he makes from every place that they move to. He has an older brother but he is away studying in Princeton University and never sees him and only talks to him a few times through letters sent in the mail. Jack is a young boy who is trying to fit in with the group and wants to feels like he belongs. With many different men his mother dates he is never surprised that they all leave and never let him truly feel what it is to actually be a family. As a young boy, Jack is punished several times by schools and creates trouble for himself. He is rarely punished by his mother because of her past problems with her father and fears that she could cause the same frustration and turmoil in his life as her father did to her. Unlike Telemachus, whose grandfather is still living in the community, Jack’s grandfather can be told apart from the way he raised Rosemary and all the frustration she describes she went through since her early childhood.
As for Jack, the toughest obstacle for him was trying to find himself as a person without the help of a father figure. Jack grew up with basically only his mother. His actual father never really wanted anything to do with Jack or his mom and abandoned them. Rosemary had started dating several different men at some points in their traveling and always ended up splitting again and they were left with a family of two constantly. Jack always made friends everywhere they moved and usually he enjoyed them. His friends were really what made Jack, Jack. He would always want to do what they did and they were really his instigation for certain decisions he made. Jack and Rosemary always dreamed of one day finally having a settled family in which they lived happily and peacefully together. Without an actual father in the picture, Jack was left to get simple ideas from his mother but ultimately for himself to find out and experience himself the process of going through adulthood. He was never shown the way a young man like him should act or behave so he acted upon what he felt was necessary or what he believed. Without a father figure, Jack was sort of confused. He didn’t know his responsibilities or duties he’d have to take in hand or even the problems and events that he had to overcome during his time growing up. With no father, Jack felt disappointed. He felt like he and his mother would never be able to become a true family with a father in hand and was always wondering how different his life would be if he had a father who actually cared for him and Rosemary and how different they would be living rather than having to travel constantly and having different men torment him and his mother.
Like Jack, Telemachus also had a missing father. The difference between Jack and Telemachus was that Telemachus new he had a father who cared for him and his mother but was just in need of search for. He was sent off to fight in the great Trojan War and never returned home from there on. Telemachus was able to have a sense of what his father was like from stories and great tales told by the people and his mother of what a noble and honorable man he was. With those stories and special attributes of his father Odysseus, Telemachus was able to acquire some knowledge of where he stood and what his father would have liked for him to do. He always made decisions on the idea of what his father would do. He would constantly dream about one day finally being able to meet his father for the first time since he was a newly born and the awe it’d bring from finally seeing him.
Unlike Jack, Telemachus’ toughest obstacle was growing up into adulthood and finding where he belonged and his duty. From hearing such stories of his praised father, he would always want to make decisions that would make him the same respected man as Odysseus. Telemachus was still young during the story, roughly in his late teen years. He had almost no experience of dealing with situations like the one he was in with the suitors. Telemachus knew that if he didn’t try to help his mother out, he would eventually lose the wealth and resources his father had acclaimed to the thirsty merciless suitors. With no experience and no father to teach him heroic ways, Telemachus was on his own to find a way to get rid of his mother’s problem and restore the peacefulness of his father’s home. Along the traveling he did, Telemachus knew that if he found no word of his father, it would be up to him to relieve his family of this problem. He knew that he had the power within him to resolve such situation but with no experience or father to mentor him, he felt weak and confused as to what to do or where to start. After his journey and return home, Telemachus had gained sufficient experience and motivation from kings and queens from around the lands that gave him the motivation and inspiration to do what was what he had to do. He had returned from his journey a complete different person. He was no longer a young boy but a wise and ready young man.
As both stories progressed, the characters within them also gained new characteristics that helped them brave and confront new situations. For Telemachus, his journey traveling across the seas and meeting old friends of his father gave him the confidence to brave his problem back home with stories and images of his glorious father. He had left home as a young man, confused, inexperienced, uncertain and insecure. During his travel, Telemachus grew as a man. Athena the Greek goddess mentors him and guides him through his journey. On his journey he came to the help of Menelaus, the king of Pylos. King Menelaus reinforced Telemachus with the loyalty and devotion that would help him carry through the rest of the journey and also help him drastically with defeating the suitors. After his return home, Telemachus seemed a grown brave developed soldier. He had come back completely different and brave enough to confront the suitors with the help of Odysseus. As for Jack, many small events aided him into his adulthood. One of the most distinguished events would be with a rifle he got as a gift. The rifle gave him power and he felt superior carrying it around the house. He knew he couldn’t use it but the chance of even holding it gave him confidence. As he proceeded into his adulthood, Jack slowly illustrated that the rifle had almost no power to him anymore. After getting rid of it, there wasn’t any change to him, he seemed as if it were nothing when at one point it was his everything. With the situations of new men his mother would date, he began feeling adaptable. He no longer felt as vulnerable and insecure around new problems and people. He changed immensely during his young adulthood. From a small, confused, insecure and lonesome boy, he eventually got into a prep-school and after being expelled was brave and open minded enough to not waste his life and join the army.
With both characters sharing similarities and differences throughout This Boy’s Life and The Odyssey, they are conveniently able to be compared in various different aspects but also distinguish differences throughout the stories. Telemachus in his own part of the story must grow up and make a man of himself in order to aid his mother and save his father’s belongings. Jack on the other hand is a small boy who has never felt the affection and support of a family. He must look up to certain belongings and actions of other people to be able to have a plan of what he wants to do. Both The Odyssey and This Boy’s Life share the story of passion and love they have for their mothers, hardships and difficult obstacles and illustrate the new coming of certain characters who have out grown their young years and proceeded into their adulthood. As many similarities both stories might have, there is also events and certain features to both that tell each other apart.

Work Cited
Homer, The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1965. Print
Wolf, Tobias. This Boy’s Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Print

Pizano

Cited: Homer, The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1965. Print Wolf, Tobias. This Boy’s Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Print Pizano