Throughout the book, the unnamed narrator hints that he’s different from his classmates at his New England prep school. Unlike most, he comes from a middle-class background and attends the school on scholarship; he was also raised Catholic but has Jewish heritage. And while most of his classmates come from traditional, two-parent households, the narrator is distant from his father, and his mother is dead. Though the narrator claims that the school isn’t “snobbish” and that all of the boys are treated equally, his feelings about his own identity suggest otherwise. He’s is very concerned about his reputation, and he crafts an image for himself that obscures much of his true identity in order to feel like he belongs. But in doing so, the other boys feel that they don’t know who the narrator really is. In this way, Wolff illustrates that molding one’s identity to fit in can backfire and make a person feel even more cut off from others.
The narrator hides his Jewish identity because he fears that it will alienate him from his classmates—but this isolates him even from those who share that identity. Even though the narrator never observes any bullying, it seems to him that “the Jewish boys, even the popular ones, even the athletes, [have] a subtly charged field around them, an air of apartness.” Only by hiding his Jewish roots does the narrator feel that he can truly belong and avoid this “apartness.” Several years into school, however, the narrator discovers that his roommate, Bill White, is Jewish. He is surprised to learn this, but he chooses not to reveal his own Jewish ancestry because he wants to fit in with the other boys. However, he goes on to say that even though he and Bill get along and choose to room together every year, “real friendship elude[s] [them].” Their shared heritage could actually form a bond between them, but the narrator’s decision to hide his identity only creates distance.
The narrator also tries to emulate upper-class boys but ends up projecting a false identity that makes people feel as though they don’t truly know him. The narrator notes that as much as the school tries to eliminate class hierarchy, such divisions are inevitably present in the students’ interactions. He points out that one can tell a person’s class by their clothes, vacations, and attitudes about money. The narrator describes “a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world.” Because the narrator doesn’t have that same self-assurance, he worries that he won’t fit in with wealthier students, like his friend Purcell. The narrator therefore tries to emulate his upper-class peers’ clothes and attitudes, even though he’s actually middle-class. He attempts to “wipe out any trace of the public school virtues—sharpness of dress, keenness of manner, spanking cleanliness, freshness, niceness, sincerity” that he had. But he notes that after four years of doing this, the performance has “left [him] a stranger even to those [he] called [his] friends.” As much as he tries to belong, obscuring his identity in order to fit in actually distances him further from the other boys.
The narrator is expelled after plagiarizing a story and assuming an identity that isn’t his, illustrating how the narrator’s inability to be himself ends up completely alienating him from the student body. The narrator reads an old story in the literary magazine of a nearby girls’ school. The protagonist of the story is similar to him: she is middle-class, and she hides her Jewish identity from her peers in order to fit in. The narrator decides to submit the story to his school’s literary contest, changing the protagonist’s name and gender to his own. He identifies with it so wholly that he fears when others read it, they will judge him for the story. However, the narrator’s classmates praise the story and also seem relieved that he published it, “as if they'd felt all along that [he] was holding back, and could breathe easier now that [he]’d spoken up.” This praise suggests that the narrator’s peers feel closer to him because he’s revealed what they believe is (and, to some degree, actually is) his personal backstory. Yet when the school faculty discover the narrator’s plagiarism, they immediately expel him. Even in trying to reveal his personal life to his peers, the narrator obscures his identity by hiding behind someone else’s story. As a result, the narrator loses his sense of belonging in the school entirely: not only does he lose all of his friends, but he’s removed from the school altogether. In the end, altering his identity in order to belong only further alienates the narrator.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Identity and Belonging ThemeTracker
Identity and Belonging Quotes in Old School
Class was a fact. Not just the clothes a boy wore, but how he wore them. How he spent his summers. The sports he knew how to play. His way of turning cold at the mention of money, or at the spectacle of ambition too nakedly revealed. You felt it as a depth of ease in certain boys, their innate, affable assurance that they would not have to struggle for a place in the world, that it had already been reserved for them…
I simply decided that it would be better not to use the Jewish defense. There was no obvious reason for being cagey. In my short time at the school I’d seen no bullying or manifest contempt of that kind, and never did. Yet it seemed to me that the Jewish boys, even the popular ones, even the athletes, had a subtly charged field around them, an air of apartness.
I thought writing should give me pleasure, and generally it did. But I didn’t enjoy writing this poem. I did it almost grudgingly, yet in a kind of heat too. Maybe it was good, maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t even a poem, only a fragment of a story in broken lines. I couldn’t tell. It was too close to home. It was home: my mother gone; my father, though no fireman, wounded by my disregard as I was appalled by his need; the mess, the noise, the smells, all of it just like our place on a Saturday morning; the sense of time dying drop by drop, of stalled purpose and the close, aquarium atmosphere of confinement and repetition. I could hear and see everything in that apartment, right down to the pattern in the Formica tabletop. I could see myself there, and didn’t want to. Even more, I didn’t want anyone else to.
I submitted the elk-hunter poem. “Red Snow,” I called it.
By now I’d been absorbed so far into my performance that nothing else came naturally. But I never quite forgot that I was performing. In the first couple of years there’d been some spirit of play in creating the part, refining it, watching it pass. There’d been pleasure in implying a personal history through purely dramatic effects of manner and speech without ever committing an expository lie, and pleasure in doubleness itself: there was more to me than people knew!
All that was gone. When I caught myself in the act now I felt embarrassed. It seemed a stale, conventional role, and four years of it had left me a stranger even to those I called my friends.
The whole thing came straight from the truthful diary I’d never kept: the typing class, the bus, the apartment; all mine. And mine too the calculations and stratagems, the throwing over of old friends for new, the shameless manipulation of a needy, loving parent and the desperation to flee not only the need but the love itself. Then the sweetness of flight, the lightness and joy of escape. And, yes, the almost physical attraction to privilege, the resolve to be near it at any cost: sycophancy, lies, self-suppression, the masking of ambitions and desires, the slow cowardly burn of resentment toward those for whose favor you have falsified yourself. Every moment of it was true.
I didn’t want to lose my place in the circle, so of course I was afraid of what my schoolmates would think after reading “Summer Dance.”
My fears came to nothing. Masters and boys alike told me pretty much what George had said—with plain goodwill and something else, something like relief, as if they’d felt all along that I was holding back, and could breathe easier now that I’d spoken up.
