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Chapter 9: Bulletin
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Old School, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Honesty and Honor
Identity and Belonging
The Power of Literature
Competition, Masculinity, and Pride
Education, Failure, and Growth
Summary
Analysis
The problem begins at one of the headmaster’s teas, when a boy asks Dean Makepeace if he knew Ernest Hemingway during the war. The dean is distracted and later realizes that he had not been clear in his denial. They both drove ambulances in Italy and were injured, but they never met. Weeks later, a boy asks him about Hemingway’s beliefs, and the dean realizes that the boys think that he is friends with Earnest Hemingway. Many similar moments occur over the following years, but not in a way that Dean Makepeace can deny knowing Hemingway. He also realizes he that does not explicitly deny it because of some desire to be important by association. He doesn’t see this as a lie, but instead as “dozing off in his attention to the truth.”
The opening of the final chapter shifts the focus to Dean Makepeace, but it makes it clear from the outset how his story is related to the narrator’s. Just as the narrator never outright lied about his identity, the dean never outright lies that he personally knows Ernest Hemingway. But in allowing the boys to believe it—particularly because it makes him seem more important—the dean isn’t being fully honest or honorable.
Themes
Meanwhile, Dean Makepeace deals with other issues in his life over the years. His wife leaves him and moves to California. He hears from her and loans her money occasionally, and she dies in a car accident in 1953, the year he becomes dean. The headmaster and the dean together try to enact change, ending compulsory religious education and diverting more of the endowment into scholarship funds. The Dean knew that part of his power in his position stems from his perceived relationship with Ernest Hemingway.
Not only is the dean’s association with Hemingway a point of pride, but it also lends him a degree of power that complicates the idea of honor. Even though his power allows him to enact positive reforms in the school alongside the headmaster, his accomplishments stem from a dishonest place.
Themes
The problem becomes more pressing when Hemingway is invited to the school in Spring 1961. Dean Makepeace feels guilty and anxious over the myth of their friendship, particularly because he knows the boys believe he invited Hemingway himself. He watches as they pore over their typewriters. He hates the competitions and how the boys use it as a mark of superiority over each other.
Dean Makepeace also acknowledges here how the competitions are simply a means for the boys to proclaim themselves as superior because of their association with Hemingway. But as the Dean acknowledges later, he is in some ways doing the same thing—enjoying a mark of superiority by loose association with Hemingway.
Themes
A few days after the narrator’s story is chosen, the headmaster informs Dean Makepeace that the narrator plagiarized the story. The dean says that he can’t personally throw the narrator out—that he has to resign. He explains that he isn’t friends with Ernest Hemingway and has been in violation of the Honor Code for years. The headmaster argues that the dean never expressly said he knew Hemingway, but the dean still insists that he has to resign.
Here the Dean explicitly acknowledges how he is in some ways perpetuating the same dishonesty as the narrator, because he has been lying about his relationship with Hemingway. The fact that he feels he has to resign reinforces how dishonor can cost a person everything, but also demonstrates that he wants to rebuild his integrity by acting more honorably.
Themes
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Dean Makepeace stays with his older sister and then takes a few trips to Toronto, Montreal, and New York. He also visits the grave where his wife’s ashes are buried. He regrets quitting his job—he loved the conversations and the boys. Now he hardly feels alive. He applies to other jobs and goes to one interview at St. John’s, but when he refuses to explain why he left the school, he knows that the interview is over. The chairman of the department also gives his condolences over Ernest Hemingway’s death.
Like the narrator, Dean Makepeace then undergoes a painful period of growth and learning as a result of his failure. While he barely feels himself to be alive, he recognizes the value in his position and how much he loved teaching. Additionally, as the interviewer at St. John’s indicates, his resignation proves his integrity but does not actually change people’s perception of his relationship with Hemingway.
Themes
Dean Makepeace misses being respected, the tumult in the hallways, and the ability to give guidance and comfort to boys who are homesick and discouraged. The dean writes to the headmaster, apologizing for deserting his post and asking to return. He knows a man has been hired to replace him and understands that he won’t expect to resume his former schedule of classes. The headmaster says he hoped that the dean would decide to come back, and for that reason hired a new teacher for the year only. The dean would teach his usual classes and live in his old apartment, but the headmaster asks that he not return as dean or try to correct the record on Hemingway. Dean Makepeace accepts the offer.
Only through failure, learning, and humility is the dean then able to return to the headmaster to ask for his job back. And because he wanted to correct the situation and prove his integrity, he is rewarded in the fact that the headmaster chose to hire someone for a year only. While the headmaster’s request that he not set the record straight adds some complexity to the situation, the fact that the dean wanted to be honest in resigning allows him to regain success at the school and return to it honorably.
Themes
Dean Makepeace returns to the school on the last possible day, on the day the faculty assembles for a pre-term conference at the headmaster’s house. He takes a wrong turn on a route he’s traveled for years, then gets lost while backtracking and arrives nearly an hour late. As he comes into the headmaster’s garden, the teachers all turn to look at him, and the headmaster welcomes him back with open arms. Though the dean is the older man, he feels like a boy and recalls the words, “His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.”
The final quote of the book is a reference to the New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son, wherein a son squanders his inheritance but is warmly welcomed home by his father after acknowledging his failure. The story suggests that failure should be seen as an opportunity for learning and growth. This is true not only for Dean Makepeace, but also for the narrator. Because Wolff does not recount the narrator returning to the school as a visiting writer, this scene also becomes a surrogate for how the narrator, too, is welcomed home even after his failures.
Themes
