Tobias Wolff 's `` Dirty Realism `` Essay

How would you deal with living in a community in isolation, feeling lost with those around you, and having your whole life changed with one drop of blood? FOUR by Veronica Roth displays all this with a story of a young man named Tobias Eaton. This book demonstrates the drama and strategy which keeps readers involved. From being placed in one environment from birth and choosing something precisely different, readers can see what Tobias had to go through. The main elements of this book are conflict, style, and mood.

When a child experiences trauma, it stays with them for the rest of their life. When a child experiences abuse, one of the highest forms of trauma, they can do little to stop it from affecting everything they do. Tobias Wolff’s memoir, This Boy’s Life, Illustrates this. While it can be said that Rosemary, the mother of Jack, was in many ways responsible for his life, she herself can not solely be blamed. The trauma and abuse she experienced as a child contributed greatly to her choices, and her son’s life. This shows that adversity in Rosemary’s life lead to her not being able to act normally, and this caused the life of her son.

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

“This is a story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free… The other will spend every day until his death behind bars...” (Moore, XI) In The Other Wes Moore, the author, Wes Moore, and the other Wes Moore both grew up in similar, yet different, circumstances and had completely different outcomes. This captivating narrative demonstrates how the choices you make, make you. In the introduction, the author Wes Moore validates this statement by saying, “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.” (Moore XI) The author, Wes Moore, shows the readers that a person’s environment, circumstances, education (or lack

Everyday we observe people’s contrasting opinions. Whether it be in politics, school, or in one’s personal life, emotions are often a major factor when it comes to expressing one’s ideas. In writing, an audience must be aware this, and decide for themselves if an author is being bias or equally representing all sides to a situation. In both Into the Wild and In Cold Blood, the authors form distinct opinions about their main characters and believe family structure heavily influenced their future.

One’s childhood has a lasting impact on their entire life. Moore’s upbringing and the loving family he was born into, no matter how trivial it may seem, greatly contributed to his success. Wes seemingly grew up the same as any other kid in the Bronx – in a single-parent household, surrounded by bad influences… what separated him from the crowd? His support system: his family, and their ultimate support and sacrifices made all the difference. As a teenager, Wes seemed to be going down the wrong path. He constantly skipped school, his academic failures were overwhelming, and he was even arrested for vandalism. In the case of the other Wes, his family simply let these actions slide, and decision after decision ultimately landed him with a life sentence in prison. The author Wes’s mother, however, refused to allow this behavior to continue. As a method of intervention, she forced Moore to attend Valley Forge, and in doing so, probably saved his career. The extent of his family’s sacrifice was evident on page 95 when Wes realized that “my grandparents took the money they had in the home in the Bronx, decades of savings and mortgage payments, and gave it to my mother

Although the narrators in This Boy’s Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff and The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore both have especially strong female role models, their experiences detailed ,the time period that they grew up in, and their father figures differ dramatically.

In the short story Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff creates a sarcastically doughty character by the name of Anders. However, it becomes transparent that beneath this stone-cold portrayal of a man resides a troubled past. Throughout the story, Ander’s life struggles slowly begin to show through the cracks, giving the reader insight into what has turned him into such a hateful man. Another interesting character in the story is the man who takes charge of the robbery. He remains unnamed for the entirety of the happenings, and, although he is not alone in committing this crime, plays an important role in framing the theme of Wolff’s work. Wolff uses literary strategies such as imagery and extreme detail to pull the reader into the story, lock in their attention, and relate the symbolism and emotion of what’s happening. These devices have a great effect on the story.

The world we live in could never be described as black and white. We as individuals, all have our unique thoughts, opinions, and realities. Many of us can go through the same exact experience, but yet have different impacts and interpretations of that experience. Authors express these differences and viewpoints by setting the desired tones within a piece of literature. These tones represent the author's thoughts and feelings toward the theme, as well as set the atmosphere and stage of the story for the audience. Every author will adopt a particular type of writing style, as well as carefully selecting words, phrases, imagery and sentence structure that expresses their desired tone. A story's theme of innocence and experience has two commonly

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. This saying fits perfectly with a certain character that goes by the name of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. The narrator and protagonist Howard Campbell is an American playwright living in Germany with a German wife as World War II breaks out. Campbell is persuaded to remain in Germany, cultivate the Nazis, and become an American Agent. Throughout the novel “Mother Night” you get to see different sides of Howard. As the novel gets deeper so do you with this character, getting to learn more and more about Howard and his personality. This essay will show you who and what type character Howard W. Campbell, Jr was. Howard at heart a somewhat a simple man, who loved his wife Helga and his work as a writer. he hides his true self deep inside and puts on a façade for everyone. Howard is so effective at hiding himself, that people only know him as the Nazi he pretends to be.

Most stories are not just stories written to entertain the reader. Intentional or not, writers are often commentating on the world around them. Social commentary is interwoven in the fabric of novels, and it is often up to the reader to determine what they take away from any given work. Although written for entertainment’s sake, stories usually include the social or political views of the author and serve as a platform for their views to be made known.

Words can influence the mind in many ways that thought may not be able to. They are carefully placed and shared in different ways by each and every individual. Words have powerful impacts and can majorly impact how one may think, feel, or even lead others to feel. Written by Markus Zusak, “The Book Thief” describes a story of an innocent foster girl, Liesel Meminger, who resides in Munich, Germany at one of the most troubling time periods in history, Nazi Germany. A tale narrated by the one and only Death himself, shows the perspective from his point of view, as well as others, describing how Liesel had been seized away from her birth mother at a young age, and put into a foster family. Her new family, the Hubermanns. As she matures and grows into a more critical thinker, understanding and analyzing everything that carefully happens around her. Her foster-father, Hans guides her and teaches her how to read, which little does she know sparks her journey, the art of stealing books. Liesel soon discovers that words aren 't simply lines on a page, they are strong emotions packed into a form that merely is held in her delicate hands. Not only did she hold the pages of emotion, she held a power, a dangerous weapon of words, a weapon of control, and every book that she had stolen was giving her unimaginable power that made her think in ways that she would’ve never thought she could have. As with Nazi propaganda, and a gift that enabled her to broaden her worldview. Liesel evolves

Wolff writes the short story from the first person perspective of the Husband who, "…went to school with blacks … worked with blacks and lived on the same street with blacks and … always gotten along just fine.", however; Wolff did not intend for the reader to perceive that the Husband is racist. Although his wife feels two cultures with two distinct backgrounds could "know" one another; her Husband's insight of multi-cultured relationships remained unchanged. Although in love, two people of differing races or cultures could never conceptually "know" each other.

Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s

It seems sometimes like the market for young adult literature is written down to the readers, almost in a condescending manner. That is why a book like The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is so refreshing in this sea of cookie cutter romances and fantasies. While classified as a young adult novel, it deals with very serious themes. The book’s cover comes printed with this label: “It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.” It is a dark allusion to what is to come. But Zusak makes this story more accessible to the audience he is writing to and does this by creating identifiable characters, by bringing humor into