This Boys Life

            The book This Boys Life by Tobias Wolff is a memoir about his life as a child. He looks back at his life with regret for the things he had done. He writes about his childhood as if he was admitting his mistakes as a child. Sometimes he writes about a particularly bad thing he had done and writes a subtle excuse for his misbehavior. But the interesting part of the book was reading how a boy that was a terrible-behaving teenager became a famous writer. He forged his report cards. He forged his own checks and shot squirrels from his window. Everybody expected him to become a high school dropout and eventually go to jail. But no, he is now a famous writer, who is able to write his own autobiography. That is the reason that I enjoyed reading this book, because it was about a boy that could have amounted to nothing that became something. 

          Tobias Wolff described how he managed to get out of his isolated hometown of Cement, Oregon. He forged notes from his teachers and coaches and sent applications to boarding schools. Because of the fact that he skipped school most of the time, didn't play sports, and was a thief, the only way to possibly get in was to forge his documents. Somehow he got into Hill Boarding School. But like he did with his other educational opportunities, he couldn't take advantage of his luck and ended up getting kicked out of school as a junior and joining the army. Wolff described his time in the army as what he needed in his life. He described the army as the reason he was able to break out of his juvenile delinquent behavior. I thought it was very interesting to hear that the army can put a person in their place. I think that it makes sense, for a person that could never be disciplined, perhaps the army is the only way to discipline them. This Boys Life is an example of that, Tobias always had an interest in guns, he was always tempted to point his gun at a human and pull the trigger. But the army could teach him why that is not something humans can do to each other, when Tobias Wolff was actually supposed to kill people, maybe he realized the horror in killing other human beings. 

                This Boys Life was very interesting to me because it was about a boy that started out badly behaved but pulled it together by going to the army. It was interesting to see how Tobias Wolff finally realized who he was in life. As a teenager, he stole, he fought and he drank, just to be difficult. But in the army all he could do was fight, and finally he got sick of it. He got sick of being difficult, I think it's very important for people to realize that its pointless to be difficult.