Please write a blog post for the following question:
On page 214, Wolff writes:
"I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in my words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself. These were their letters. And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, it seemed to me saw, at last, my own face."
What do you think Toby says in these letters--and how do they give a face to the phantom he currently is?
You can respond to this question in a few ways:
1.) Write the letter that you think Toby wrote for himself.
2.) How do you think this passages relate back to one of the core issues/themes that runs through the start of the book.
3.) Why is this the moment that Toby finally sees his own face? Why does it came in the chapter entitled "Citizenship in the School?"
Again, I would encourage you to remember what the requirements of a good blog entry are...
Good Luck and let me know if you have any questions,
AK
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13 comments:
This is the letter that I think Toby wrote for himself.
Toby Wolff puts his heart into what he does. He may be a quiet boy who doesn't talk much or participate in class, but he is an enormous part in the community. I always see him taking books out. He does not do anything that he does not find of interest. He swims on the school swim team. He has tremendous talent when it comes to swimming.I think that he could go far with that. The best thing about Toby is his integrity. He will never lie to you. He believes strongly in integrity and is always helping others. He cares about his friends and does not turn his back on them. Toby has been a boy scout for quite some time now, he's made his way all the way to an eagle scout. This shows that Toby is willing to work hard and make it to the top. Toby Wolff seeks to please almost everyone including teachers. He will almost never let you down. He does very well when it comes to school work. He gets everything done on time. I feel that Toby has more potential but he cannot reach that at Concrete High School. He needs others who are willing to help him along the way.
Kerry--
Thank you for being the first one to post their comment--never an easy thing to do.
After reading your post, I would encourage you and your classmates to dig a little deeper here (wink, wink--depth of thought). For example, can you provide specific examples of things Toby has done that highlight his integrity, name the books he has checked out and why he might be reading them, or what does his athletic prowess as a swimmer say about his identity.
Hope this helps--keep them coming.
The Magus
This passage relates back to the core theme of Toby trying to find an identity. Throughout the book Toby is either imagining himself as someone else or acting like someone he's not on the inside. He first strikes poses in the mirror with his gun because a marine sniper is an ideal person to him at the time. "The camouflage coat made me feel like a sniper, and before long I began to act like one" (24). This camouflage gives him a different sense of himself but is really just distracting him from the truth. Is the camouflage just hiding from other people? Or is it really hiding his identity from himself? Toby forging the letters for his applications to the prep schools is a similar situation. "I wrote without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used if they had known me as I knew myself" (214). Toby thinks he is who he writes about but this is just his imagination. He says he did not write with 'heat or hyperbole' but, in reality, this is not true. His mind has its idea of him and the world has its own. His mind's idea is a hyperbolized version of the world's. Therefore, he is just hiding himself in the ideas of his mind. The human heart is a dark forest, but so is the human mind. Things get hiden and some are lost.
This passage relates immenssely with one of the key issues and themes in the book. The way to obtaining your true identity. Not the identity they want to have, not the identity of someone else, but their one true identity. In the letters that the teachers write, Toby sees the boy he is. Not the one he shows himself to other people as. The writing he reads from the teachers seem to speak to him in a clearer way than when people communicate to him verbally. “Whenever I was told to think about something, my mind became a desert”(142). At this moment when he is reading the writing I would switch around the words. “Whenever I was told to analyze writing, my mind became clear.”
“The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second one is, no one has yet discovered.” Toby has struck that pose when he was standing next to the rifle. I believe that the second duty is spread out into multiple steps. Step one Toby completed when he had that out of body experience on page 175. Step two has now been completed; to see yourself as others see you.
It is important that Toby sees his face now because it means he is finally stepping back and looking at himself. As I hope, he may see himself in what he is now, a boy without an identity, who keeps lying and stealing while trying to create on for himself. He could see that he is sabotaging his own attempts to create an identity for himself. I hope that now he sees himself as this and tries to change his lack of identity into something better. Toby may now see, he can stand up to Dwight. That Dwight has lost his power and is desperately trying to regain it.
This line occurs in "Citizenship in the School" because Toby may be realizing that what will get him out of the life he has now is education. In one of his other books you showed us Tobias's dedication is "To my brother who gave me books." Toby is seeing what would get him out of the dark forest, unfortunately he is trying to lie his way into what he thinks would help him by filling out the applications falsely.
(2) Toby’s past and present life has hindered him from taking control, thus he has performed negative actions to gain a sense of power. As Toby’s actions became more severe, his power has actually diminished with the lack of respect people have given him. While Toby looks at himself as an outsider with a general background of himself, he starts to think past the flaws he has created; lying, stealing, drinking, and doing drugs. The problems that pursue Toby outshine the few, but strong attributes he obtains: His commitment to being an Eagle Scouts, his devotion to his mother and creating a life in which he and his mother both can steer and succeed in. Looking as an objective person, Toby starts seeing what qualities he actually has. Realizing the positive aspects about Tobias Wolff leads to a gain in power, not the one he gains when striking a malicious and selfish pose with the rifle, but the positive power that allows him to gain self-worth and significance. Toby has been consistently put down due to his wrong-doings, so now he is able to recognize he has potential and these potentials create who he is as a person, a boy with integrity. As he writes comments about Toby Wolff, he writes with truth and a modest sense of dignity. The transcripts do not contain Toby’s inabilities; acing exams or scoring the football or basketball’s winning touchdown/basket. The transcripts describe the imagined and achieved attributes Toby has obtained, and these are written with power and strength, which will give Toby the power and strength he has been desperately searching for.
HW part 2:
Dear Mr. Johnson,
I am writing upon the account of Jack Wolf. Wolf is a good student; he works hard and gets the work done. He contributes in class when I ask questions and hands in his work on time. He does what he is told and nothing more. He is a normal boy who likes to hang out with his friends. He is on the swim team, a boy scout, and can play the drums. I think that he would be a good addition to your school and that it would be a wise choose to add him to your community. If you do we promise you that you will see Wolf succeed, but you will not see him exceed expectations.
Thank you,
Mr. Ray L. Musebe
It was my understanding that Toby made his letter in a way that his teachers accepted him but did not think he was anything special. For this reason I am confused because it says in the passage that, “it seemed to me, at last, my own face.” Toby actually finds himself acceptable but not extraordinary. If that is the cause it means that Toby is proud because he is “OK” not the bad, ill mannered boy everyone is used to. To me Toby’s emotion are a world wind, and half the time I am lost in them and do not know where to go.
I think that this is the moment that Toby sees his own face because he see's that the teachers don't see him for who he is so maybe, he thinks to himself, he isn't who he thinks he is.
So when he says "it seemed at last i saw my own face", it might mean that at last he see's what he has done badly and he see's from his teachers and other peoples views who he really is. "Citizenship in the School" means being a part of school and contributing in it and being a citizen of school, and it is in this chapter because he is not being truthful (or maybe he is, it depends what side you are coming from) to the schools about school.
3). This moment in the book is when Toby finally starts to see his own face. He even said, "I saw, at last, my own face"(214). It probably happens here because he has to forge the teacher recommendations, which means he must review himself, and basically look upon himself from an outside point of view. When he went back over the past 15 years(about) he probably remembered all of the bad things he had done, and all of the tough moments he'd had; however when he wrote the recommendations he made himself out to be this perfect student and athlete, and claimed he was, "an upright boy who had already in his own quiet way exhausted the resources of his school and community"(214).So why would these lies he made up about himself show him his own face? Maybe it's not about who he was in the past, but who he wants to be in the future. This whole time he has been searching for his identity, and hasn't really had a face or identity. Since we are able to choose who we want to be, this moment probably shows Toby who he wants to be. Earlier in the book we saw him fantasize about these different lives. He would picture himself in these big houses, with this father who loved and spent time with him. He would strike poses with the gun to seem stronger and more superior. Reading and books also played a vital role in his life! Like the Boys Life magazine and the books he checked out of the library about the different colleges and schools. Reading opened up these doorways to different possibilities and lives. For example, right after he read the books about the different schools, he was all ready to pack up his things and leave for one of them right away. That is most likely why this section is entitles Citizenship of the school. It means he is apart of something, and usually when your a citizen you have a identity in that area you are living or are apart of. This is what Toby has always wanted, so that is probably why he is seeing, for the first time, his own face in this moment.
I think this passage relates to way back in the beginning with the first epigraph. “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered.” Oscar Wilde. I believe that Toby discovers his second duty in life while he is forging his recommendation letters. When he finally sees his own face. He has already struck his pose in life, and his second duty was to finally realize, realize that everything he took from Sister James and said in his confession has all come true and this is what he has realized at this moment. When he lies about the things he says in his recommendation letters he knows that he is lying, he is just covering it up, pretending it’s not there, making things worse for himself. After he finishes writing these letters, after he realizes what has happened, after he accept the facts that he is a liar and a cheater, only after, will he be able to move on.
I think this is the moment that Toby sees his own face because he writes the way he thinks everyone sees him and this is how he pictures himself. It might not be the face the rest of the world sees on him but this is what he sees himself as. When he is writing his own letters it says, "That was what I thought I was writing - the truth".(213) When he starts thinking of himself as an excellent student and athlete, and he says he is an eagle scout, he starts to believe that this is true and that is what he really is.
I think this chapter is called "Citizenship in school" because he is trying to get into really nice schools so he can get away from Dwight. He believes that he should get in the schools only because he has made up a fantasy of who he wants to be. As we have read before "The human heart is a dark forest." Toby is using these fake applications to get himself out of his current life, and eventually to get him out of the dark forest.
Toby has lived his life always trying to be someone else. This isn’t the first time where Toby has looked at himself from the outside. As much as I think Toby is a bad behaved boy, he has done something that many of us couldn’t/ haven’t done to this day; look at ourselves from another person’s view point. I think that the first sentence of these words Toby has written tells us more about how Toby thinks of himself; heartless, and an exaggerator. I think he sees more than just his face in this passage. I believe he is seeing what we have seen all along. A person who is there, but cannot be themselves around the people he is with. Toby has gotten to this point in his life where he can't be himself not because of his decisions, but the actions of people around him. Toby probably wrote these letters about himself being cold and curt. He probably kept them short and said little about his daily life. Toby should focus on positive things in his life, and if he thinks there aren't he should go out and make some positive changes. Positive changes will take the phantoms hopes and turn them into reality.
As demonstrated by This Boy’s Life, Toby finds writing about himself therapeutic because he is forced to articulate his thoughts on paper. This helps him give order to an otherwise chaotic life and offers him power over himself. Once his vision of himself is put down on paper, it becomes concrete and undeniable. His face has always been hidden inside him and he has seen it on a few occasions (such as the episode with Champion after he wrecks Dwight’s car); however, he cannot comprehend it clearly until he begins to write. Toby grabs at the freedom that writing allows and he uses it to depict his true self without all of his usual lies covering it. His face begins to shine through brightly and he sees it and it gives him hope. This comes in the chapter “Citizenship in the School” because at this point, Toby finally takes some responsibility for his education. He wants to better himself by going away to boarding school (and escaping Dwight). He sees the boy who is interested in books and eager to learn and he wants to show him to the admissions people at Hill. Toby becomes aware of the fact that only through honesty will he achieve success.
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