Effect of Trauma on a Child in A Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff Essay

Tobias Wolff’s memoir, “This Boy’s Life”, explores the idea that an individual’s actions can be altered due to the people they are exposed to. The protagonist Jack Wolff lives an impressionable life where he undergoes somewhat of a dilemma in relations to his actions, being incapable of changing for the greater good of himself. The absence of a proper male role model plays a large role on Jack’s actions, though is definitely not the only reason. Jack’s actions are influenced by Rosemary’s abusive and power craving ex-husband Roy, as well as Dwight’s violent and arrogant personality. However, Jack is also responsible for his

A person who has had a trauma during any of the development stages which means the learning

The book “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff is a memoir written about the author’s childhood memories and experiences. The author shows many different characters within the book. Many of them are just minor character that does not affect the author much in his life choices and thoughts throughout his growth. But there are some that acts as the protagonist and some the antagonist. One of them is Dwight, the protagonist’s or Jack’s stepfather. This character seems to be one of the characters that inhibit Jack’s choices and decisions. This character plays a huge role in Jack’s life as it leaves a huge scar in his memory. The author here spends the majority of time in this character in the memoir to show the readers the relationship between

A trauma narrative is a narrative that describes an experience or experiences that cause someone to be destressed and cannot be incorporated into their memory easily. Throughout her own traumatic narrative, Jeannette Wall’s describes different aspects of her everyday life that showcase various levels of significance. She is able to show how certain life events impact her plans for escaping her current socioeconomic status and her plans for the future. The text is also able to tell us about trauma, poverty, ourselves, and our society. Furthermore, the text demonstrates the impact that trauma and poverty can have and how they can have lasting effects. These concepts help us to think about our own life experiences and situations and they also show us how to be analytical about our society. Lastly, this narrative is able to reveal to us the different aspects of a traumatic childhood and how important and impactful this type of upbringing can be. Jeannette Walls uses her own traumatic autobiography to show that despite her adverse upbringing in poverty and passive and unattached parenting she was able to become successful. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, shows the benefits and the value that can come from having a traumatic narrative. This is significant because it shows that an experience can shape a person, but a person can also shape the experience.

Jack Burden is known as the “student of history” ( Warren 372). The very fact that he is a historian is ironic, as he has come from an aristocratic and reputable family and grew up in Burden’s Landing. However, Jack lacks the ambition needed to excel in life and works for Willie, despite the

Child trauma is an essential factor in future development. Sociological explanations for the existence of serial killers maintain that environmental factors are possibly the most influential and very often permanently affect the later development of a child (1991). As examined in Chapter 1, family environment has significant consequences on child Sears development. Apart from this, peer relationships can also affect the level of growth of social, cognitive, emotional and physical development (Dodge, Lansford et al. (2003). According to American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2012), peers can influence children’s lives. In this chapter, peer relationships and the school environment will be examined to shed some light on the phenomenon of

As Toby and his mother, Rosemary, drive to Utah, Rosemary’s abusive ex-husband, Roy, follows them there. Roy is an insecure man who is very possessive of Rosemary. However, when Toby is a young boy, he his view of Roy is “manly”. Toby’s definition of a man is being handsome, having tattoos, and being heroic. These “manly” qualities causes Toby to look up to Roy in a way. Although Toby doesn’t want to be insecure and abusive like Roy, he wants to become strong and

The memoir, This Boy’s Life, by Tobias Wolff is about a boy fighting an internal battle between bad behavior and good morale; at the end of the book Toby becomes a good boy, but has many bumps in his journey. For example, when Toby and his mother move into Dwight’s house, he doesn’t tell his mother that Dwight is an abusive person. So when his mother was nearby Toby would lie and confirm “all his lying implications that we (Toby and Dwight) were pals and our life together was a good one” (99, Wolff). Toby kept quiet about the violence because he thinks that his mother is happy with Dwight and he doesn’t want to mess up their relationship. Secondly, when Toby is sent off to live at the farm, he siphones gas from the Welch’s car. Just afterwards,

Throughout the book, Jack is heavily influenced by the male figures in his life. His father leaving his mother left

Tobias Wolff’s prepositional memoir, This Boy’s Life, positions the audience to question the role that luck plays in the lives of the characters, particularly Toby and his mother. This account of growing up in post-war America on his life from 1955 to 1965 allows Wolff to reflect on the restrictions imposed on the disenfranchised family by societal norms that prevent them from achieving their dreams of progression through the social hierarchy. Luck plays a very minimal role in the memoir as the characters’ lives are surrounded by an absence of luck. Instead Rosemary and Toby are victims of a variety of circumstances. The social standards imposed through the patriarchy system, the cyclic nature of domestic abuse leading to this. As a

Finally, if Jack was to leave the men, then he would have the opportunity to chase his own desires. On his lunch break one day, Jack runs into his ex-wife and later tell the audience, “My ex-wife looks terrific. She drives a BMW now and wears a lot of bright green” (Griffin 21). This really contrasts with how Jack is doing in his life. This passage shows that he desires things that he could have, but the four men are holding him back.

Jack, the protagonist and narrator, was a software programmer for a company called Media Tronics, until he discovered that his boss had been stealing from and was cheating the company. His attorney told him that he should try to leave the company immediately, but instead Jack went to a board member. The board member, also being in on the indiscretion, got Jack fired for gross negligence. That led to Jack becoming a stay at home dad for his three children, Nicole, Eric, and Amanda. Meanwhile, Jack’s wife was the vice president for a company named Xygos. His wife, Julia, started to become cold towards him and the children, and he started to suspect that she was having an affair.

Based on the Perry reading that outlines the effects of trauma on children (2003) that outlines the alarm reactions, responses to threat, post-traumatic stress, emotional memory impact, numbing, avoidance, hyperarousal and disassociation responses to trauma, it is quite evident that mindfulness would be quite helpful to help youth process their emotions and experiences in a healthy and productive manner. Since traumatic experiences have such a large impact on one’s psychological, emotional and physical health, since stress takes form in a body in a mental, emotional and somatic way, self-care through the form of mindfulness can help since it encompasses self-compassion and awareness which can move them towards betterment. Conclusively, mindfulness training with children and professional adults is useful in medical and clinical settings as it introduces a whole realm of benefits and it could be employed by the public education system to use for children in the classroom, such as the start of the day in homeroom as mentioned in Hooker & Fordor’s article (2008).

Jack has a very wealthy appearance. He is blond headed and younger man. He always dresses nice with a suit and tie. He sits and stands with great posture making him look very sophisticated and well educated about what he is doing.

His mother sighed and answered. “We were incredibly rich when you’re father was alive. When he died, we lost all our money.” Jack realized this was an opportunity to learn more about his father. Ordinarily, Jack’s mother refused to talk about his father.