to the father with “yes, sir,” and “no, sir.” (Wolff, T; Boys life 21) This make the father seem like he is more than a father, more like a general of the army, or captain of the ship. This brings me to think that the father would yell at Tobias a lot, and beat him too. “My father took off for Las Vegas with his girlfriend the day after I arrived in California,” this showed how his father wasn’t caring for his son. He left for Vegas with his girlfriend after only seeing his son for a day. The father was or seemed to be insecure when a sheriff gave the school Yale his opinion of Wolff’s father: “Wolff is a boy with considerable ability and very little backbone. He is amiable and good natured, but lacks determination and steadfast.” (Wolff, G; duke of 41) This shows how the father was very insecure of him, and didn’t have a strong head on his shoulders.Wolff had a fascination with liars, so much that he wrote a story about it: The Barrack’s Thief. Tobias Wolff wrote this award-winning novel in 1984. It is about a bond uniting three soldiers. One of the soldiers turns out to be a liar and a thief who stole the narrator’s wallet, who was a part of the trio. “Wolff is fascinated with liars, and many of his stories pivot on their strange manipulations of reality. Through lying, his characters discover what they are, what they want to be, what they could have been but missed, or what they once were an have now lost.” (Desmond) Also in Powder Wolff uses the father as a liar towards his son. The father said: “Look we’re talking about four, five inches. I’ve taken this car through worse than that.” But, in actuality he really hasn’t done this and his son knows it too. In an interview with Tobias Wolff, Joan Smith asked him various questions about his feelings and opinions towards the art of writing. One question she asked was: &...
