Big Books of Spring
Old School

Questions About Old School

by Tobias Wolff

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Old School, please sign up.

Answered Questions (1)

Does anyone else feel the last chapter is anticlimax by focusing on the dean and not the narrator?
Queen I also found the last chapter disappointing until I came across an interview with the author that explains the ending. The last chapter is a story the…moreI also found the last chapter disappointing until I came across an interview with the author that explains the ending. The last chapter is a story the narrator wrote; it reflects his own struggles and experiences.

TH: I wondered why you called this section of the novel “Master.”
TW: It’s a double-edged title. Of course the section just before this ends with the word “masters.” The narrator’s listening to his teachers in the headmaster’s house. “These sure and finished men, our masters.” That’s his vision of them. And then he writes something called “Master,” and what we read is a story of a very unsure man, who’s unfinished and full of self-doubt, and self-recrimination for allowing a certain misunderstanding to persist, one that he continues to profit by. It’s also the narrator’s own story of himself. What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people’s stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves. We’ve never actually seen the narrator write a story in this whole book. He can’t know from the brief conversation he’s had with the headmaster all the things he tells us about Makepeace. How would he know what the weather was like when Makepeace goes for a job interview at this military academy? So it’s clearly coming from the narrator. And suddenly he’s giving us a story that he’s written, and the story at its heart is about duplicity and the willing tolerance of peoples’ misunderstanding of him, which the narrator himself has been guilty of. And it’s about estrangement, a feeling of not being home and struggling to get home in some way. So those concerns all come together for me in this end piece. Some people have said, “What’s that all about? Why didn’t the narrator finish his own story?” I was surprised when people had that response, because I thought that it would be apparent that the narrator was really telling his own story. (less)
flag

Unanswered Questions (2)

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more