The Power of Literature Theme Analysis

The narrator describes his prep school as a “literary place,” and writing is central to the students’ lives at the school. Many of the boys submit pieces to Troubadour, the school’s literary magazine; three famous writers visit the school every year; and the headmaster invites the sixth-form (senior) Honors English Seminar to have dinner with him once a week and enjoy “literary conversation.” The narrator’s own writing and reading influences him heavily, as he starts to form his own beliefs in conversation with other people’s narratives. His experiences suggest that literature’s power lies in its ability to affect the worldview of the person reading it.

The writers who visit the school have diverse styles, yet all of them—particularly Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway—have a profound impact on the narrator. When the narrator reads Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead for the first time, he is deeply affected by her strong, individualistic characters. He thinks, “To read The Fountainhead was to feel this caged power.” Because of Rand’s emphasis on individuality and overcoming weakness, the narrator becomes “alert to the smallest surrenders of will,” like a shoe salesman bending over a customer’s foot in the story. Rand’s writing is so captivating because it changes the narrator’s view of himself and of the world around him. Hemingway, too, has a profound effect on the narrator—particularly after reading Rand’s work. However, when Rand visits the school, she calls Jake Barnes (the protagonist of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises) a “wretched eunuch,” because he suffered a wound in the war that rendered him unable to have sex. Rereading The Sun Also Rises, the narrator disagrees with Rand: he’s struck by how Jake takes pleasure in simple things like Paris in the morning, fishing, and friendship. The narrator thinks that just because Jake has experienced hardship doesn’t make him “wretched.” He starts to understand that Rand’s characters are unrealistically tough, while Hemingway’s characters are so truthful in their vulnerability that “you felt it on the back of your neck.”  In this way, Hemingway’s work makes the narrator more empathetic toward others and more open to emotional vulnerability.

The narrator’s studies also inform his understanding that literature can powerfully affect readers. The narrator relays a class discussion about the history of Russian writers being imprisoned and killed for not conforming to the Communist Party’s agenda after the Russian Revolution. They also talk about Augustus Caesar sending the poet Ovid into exile in 8 C.E. He wonders, “why would Caesar fear Ovid, except for knowing that neither his divinity nor all his legions could protect him from a good line of poetry.” Poetry is not inherently revolutionary; rather, its power lies in the fact that it can incite others to rebel. The narrator reiterates this idea in arguing that writers have “the power to create images of the system they stood apart from, and thereby to judge it.” Crafting images—being able to impact others’ views of the world—is what gives them their power. The school’s headmaster explicitly acknowledges the power of writing when he introduces Robert Frost, who also visits the school. Growing up, the headmaster was a farm boy who had no interest in literature—but reading “After Apple-Picking” sparked a curiosity in poetry. “Make no mistake, he [says]: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.” This is evidenced by the headmaster’s decision to study poetry and teach as a result of reading this poem. His own experience proves that writing is powerful because of its effect on the reader—it can even change a person’s life path.

The narrator also experiences literature’s power through his own writing, which shapes his identity and ends up altering his life path. The narrator understands that his writing can affect how the world views him. Writing is a point of pride and status for the narrator, as he is the director of publication for Troubadour, the school’s literary review. The narrator also realizes that writing can change people’s image of him. When he finds a story written by Susan Friedman (a former student at the nearby girl’s school Miss Cobb’s) that focuses on a middle-class Jewish girl, he identifies with the story and submits it under his name as a way of indirectly admitting and coming to terms with his true identity (he’s middle-class and Jewish as well). Although plagiarizing this story leads to the narrator’s expulsion from his school, the experience helps him come to terms with aspects of himself that he previously hid away. Later on, the narrator’s chooses to pursue a life as a professional writer. Like the headmaster, he is so impacted by the literature that he reads—and the pleasure of writing—that he chooses to dedicate his life to it.

Years later, when Susan Friedman tells the narrator why she stopped writing, she says “It just cuts you off and makes you selfish and doesn't really do any good.” The narrator’s shock in response to her assertion implies that the narrator—who is a proxy for Tobias Wolff, the author of Old School—believes the exact opposite. He thinks later, “A writer was like a monk in his cell praying for the world—something he performed alone, but for other people.” Reciting a prayer is not for a monk’s own benefit, but “for other people”—and so does the power of writing lie in its ability to impact others.