Hey lauren, with the idea that you have mentioned above, where would I go with it? As in, how can I start putting that knowledge into practice? Like if I were to talk about that in an essay, what would I be saying?
Firstly, you can think of the text as existing on four main levels:
1. ---Views & Values Messages that the author expresses ---
2. ---Thematic Ideas and Concerns in the text---
3. ---Characters and their Journeys---
4. ---Structural and Language Features that convey meaning---
For the first part of your study (ie. reading the texts over the Summer and discussing them in class once school starts,) you'll mainly be concerned with levels two and three, since that's where most of the summative details are. So questions like 'Who is Arthur and why is he significant?' or 'What do Jack's experiences say about the nature of childhood?' are going to be the most valuable at that stage.
Once you've built a stable foundation there, you can move in either direction: up to level one (so zooming out of the text and thinking about bigger, broader ideas) or down to level four (a.k.a. zooming in to close textual details.) Otherwise, if you rush into thinking about huge concepts like authorial bias or how the setting affects our interpretation, you'll find it really hard to reconcile the different facets of the text, and you might even make things more complicated for yourself later down the track. Therefore, you shouldn't feel like you should address the biggest questions first, but rather document them until you are better equipped to explore them fully later.
But given where you're at now, you're probably starting to notice a few things like Jack's desire for self-determination in the way he tries to shape the narrative of his life, or even in smaller (~verging on 'level 4' structural) details like how he changes his name. Likewise, you might also read certain passages (
especially the end of the text) where Wolff's narration becomes much more overt and wonder what the significance of those kinds of excerpts are. That's why it can be helpful to start considering the role of the author and his hindsight. You're not going to be able to comprehensively answer these questions just yet, but by acknowledging them, you'll broaden your understanding of the text in a way that'll be very advantageous later.
Secondly (...even though I made more than one point before, but whatevs...) embedding this in an essay is easier than it might seem. Sometimes you'll get a prompt that directly asks you to discuss such an idea, eg.
Wolff's depiction of Jack in This Boy's Life is more idealised than honest. Do you agree? or
In This Boy's Life, it is Tobias Wolff's narration that helps us justify Jack's behaviour and sympathise with his character. Discuss. in which case you'll obviously have to structure your discussion around that concern. But it's also possible for you to get a more 'level 2 or 3' prompt like
Rosemary is the only positive role model in Jack's life. Discuss. and still be able to weave in discussions about authorial/narrative bias. For example, how do we know Rosemary is a positive role model? Does she seem that way to Jack, or to Wolff? Does Wolff perhaps look back on her parenting in a different way now that he's an adult, in contrast to how he would've seen it when he was a child? Are Jack's views and Wolff's views necessarily one and the same?
One way to explain this that I've found helps a lot for this text is to imagine you wanted to write a story about how drugs are bad, and you did drugs as a kid so you want to use that as a kind of moral reference point. But when you talk about yourself in hindsight, present-day-you is going to have a very different perspective, as well as different priorities, and perhaps even a different world view to drug-taking-you-from-the-past. So when you write from the point of view of your former self, you're not going to be accurately conveying yourself as you are in the present, because you're trying to capture how you were back when you were high on mescaline. Therefore, the values of your past-self as a character in your 'Drugs Are Bad' memoir are going to be different to the values you have as an author.
That's generally the kind of distinction you want to make when it comes to
TBL; treat 'Jack/Toby' -- I prefer Jack, but I've seen prompts go both ways -- vs. 'Wolff' as separate entities and discuss them accordingly.
Then, when it comes to your analyses, you might have a point of discussion like:
'...which reinforces the idea of Jack's lies being damaging to his relationships. However, by virtue of Wolff's frankness and the candid honesty in his depiction of his former self, we are inclined to forgive this fault in Jack and see the memoir itself as a kind of penance for his wrongdoings. Furthermore, in the chapter where...'or you might have a whole sub-argument structured around that kind of idea. It all depends on the prompt, but until you get to grips with the ideas in isolation, it can be tough to visualise how they'll all come together in the end.
That ended up being a lot longer than intended, but to answer your question more succinctly, the way you'd discuss this idea would hinge on what facet of this idea was relevant to the essay topic, and what you'd be saying would be whatever would strengthen your contention whilst showcasing your knowledge of the text. In some instances, that content might include a comment or two about the notion of an unreliable narrator or of authorial hindsight, but other times it might not, so be flexible with it
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